The RHS Facebook page is a rich archive of history-related posts by Carol Flynn, RHS Facebook admin and writer until mid-2025. Carol prolifically wrote a wide variety of meticulously researched local history articles for RHS. She continues to write for the Beverly Review and other media sources with articles particularly focused on local Ridge history.
St. Patrick's
Ridge Historical Society
Irish-American Heritage Month: The Ellerslie Cross Country Club – Part 2
By Carol Flynn
Golf was introduced to the Blue Island Ridge when a group of Irish American businessmen founded the first country club in Beverly/Evergreen Park, the Ellerslie Cross Country Club, in 1899.
The Ellerslie Club grew out of another Irish club in Chicago, the Sheridan Club. As was discussed in Part 1, the Sheridan Club was founded to honor General Phillip Henry Sheridan, the son of Irish Catholic immigrants, who had an outstanding career as a U.S. Army officer.
In the late 1800s, clubs were very important for networking and socializing. They were formed for everything from professions to politics to poetry.
Since most clubs were men-only, and the ones formed by the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment excluded Jews and Blacks, and usually Catholics, women and these other groups formed their own clubs.
By 1900, there were hundreds of clubs in the Chicago area.
Irish Catholics formed clubs focused on political issues like Irish nationalism, working for Ireland’s independence from Great Britain. Like other ethnic and nationality groups, they formed clubs around culture and identity, such as the Irish Music Club, founded in 1902, and the Irish-American Athletic Club, founded in the late 1870s.
The Sheridan Club formed upon the death of General Sheridan in 1888. Although it was called a “social club,” with the Irish, it was not possible to separate out politics and religion. Sheridan was an avowed “Fenian,” an Irish American Catholic dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic.
The founders of the Ellerslie Club were active members of the Sheridan Club, and they illustrate the advances that the Irish were making in business, education, politics, and society by the late 1800s, in the big cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago.
Here are brief biological sketches of some of the men who founded the Ellerslie Cross Country Club.
Joseph Michael Crennan was the first president of the Ellerslie Club. He was born in 1865 in Ireland and came to the U.S. at the age of 21.
In 1891, Crennan married Jean (Jennie) Walsh, who was born in Chicago to parents from Ireland. Her father, William Walsh, one of Crennan’s fellow members at the Sheridan Club, was listed on the U.S. Census as “captain of a lake vessel.” The maritime professions, sailors and fishermen, were natural for many men from Ireland.
Crennan and Jennie lived at 4825 Vincennes Avenue. Their house is still standing, a stone and brick row house, fashionable for the day, that they hired architect Maurice G. O’Brien to design in 1894, and they moved into in 1895. They had three children, Ruth, William, and Elizabeth.
Crennan became a naturalized U. S. citizen on April 1, 1895.
He was the owner of a successful cigar manufacturing and import business, the exclusive U.S. representative for fine products from Cuba and Key West. His signature products were the “world-renowned” La Carina and Golf Club cigars. He sold wholesale to shops. His business spread; he advertised for salesmen for Iowa and Michigan.
Thomas Francis Keeley was the first treasurer of the Ellerslie Club. He was born in Chicago in 1866. His father, Michael Keeley, was born in Ireland, and his mother, Catherine McCarthy, was born in Chicago in 1840 to parents from Ireland, making her a very early native of the city. He lived at his family’s home at 2829 Prairie Avenue.
Keeley’s father Michael owned Keeley Brewing Company, and when Michael died in 1888, Keeley took over running the company as president and general manager. He also took over his father’s role as vice president in the Dallas (Texas) Brewery, Inc.
Keeley was also president of the Metropolitan-Hibernia Fire Insurance Company, which offered fire and tornado coverage in six states. The family also had large interests in a hotel, and in coal and iron mines in Utah.
In 1894, the first Irish Catholic Mayor of Chicago, John Patrick Hopkins, appointed him to the Board of the Chicago Public Library.
Keeley married Margaret Gahan in 1918 when he was 45 (she was 30) and they had one daughter. Gahan was the daughter of a prominent leader of the Democrat party.
Keeley’s younger brother Eugene also worked with the brewery as secretary and treasurer and was a member of the Ellerslie Club. Their sisters Clara Gertrude and Kate were directors with the company and were sportswomen at the club. Both married men from the Ellerslie Club.
As no surprise, Keeley was anti-Prohibition and worked against that movement. With Prohibition, the brewery closed and sat vacant and decaying for over a decade while Keeley advocated for ending Prohibition and creating legitimate jobs and taxes. He died shortly after Prohibition ended, while in the process of reopening the brewery.
Walter Thomas (W.T. or W. Thomas) Nash was the Ellerslie Club’s first secretary. He was born in 1859 in Chicago, and both of his parents came from England. His father was a meat packer. Nash attended the University of Chicago. It appears the family was not Catholic.
In 1885, he married Nellie C. Fuller, born in Chicago in 1865. They had one daughter.
Although Nash owned a meat packing company, his primary interest was in real estate as part of the company Nash, Trego, and Helliwell, which started in 1888.
Frederick (Fred) Kellogg Higbie, a founder of Ellerslie and member of the first Grounds Committee, was born in New York in 1866.
Like Nash, Higbie doesn’t fit the mold of the others. His family had been in the U.S. for several generations already. He married Julia Pausinsky, whose parents came from Germany, in 1890, and they had two daughters. It appears Higbie was not Catholic, or at least not practicing as one, but he was a very active member of both the Sheridan and Ellerslie Clubs.
Higbie was a manufacturer and merchant dealing in woodenware and meat packing supplies with a regional presence. His company, named for him, earned over $1 million in 1903, and he incorporated a new company, the American Meat Packers’ Supply Company, in 1909. He was owner and officer of salt and coal mines in Kansas.
Higbie lived at 6431 Greenwood Avenue.
Patrick James Lawler, one of the first directors and a member of the first Sports and Pastimes Committee, was born in Chicago in 1873. His father Patrick was born in Ireland, his mother in Illinois. Patrick, the father, was a teamster with the stockyards.
Lawler became a livestock commissioner with his own company, part of the Union Stockyards of Chicago.
In 1903, he married Catherine (Kate) Keeley, the sister of Thomas Keeley. They had two daughters.
They lived at the Keeley family home on Prairie Avenue, then later had their own home at 4925 Woodlawn. The purchase of the Woodlawn House, “a high class Kenwood residence,” for $40,000 in 1919 earned a headline and article in the Chicago Tribune.
Another founding director was William A. Lydon, born in New York in 1863. Both parents, Michael Lydon and Anne Hopkins, were from Ireland. His uncle, his mother’s brother, John Patrick Hopkins, was the first Irish Catholic Mayor of Chicago.
In 1897, he married another Keeley sister, Clara Gertrude. They had three children. They lived at 4758 Prairie.
Lydon was a civil engineer and president of the Great Lakes Dredge and Docks Company. He was a major contributor to the development of Chicago’s vast waterworks systems, including the tunnels and pumping apparatus. He was involved in numerous high profile projects throughout the Great Lakes region.
He was “a widely known yachtsman” and built the Lydonia II, one of the largest yachts on the Great Lakes. During World War I, he turned the yacht over to the U.S. Navy for military use and it was commissioned as the USS Lydonia in 1917. It was used as an escort and later as a coastal survey ship and retired from service in 1947.
Other beginning directors and committee members included Henry J. Fitzgerald, owner of the Fitzgerald Trunk Co.; John Julius Kinsella, owner of the glass company famous for fine church stained glass windows; James Joseph Wade, plumbing contractor and sanitary engineer who worked with the city; John Francis Clare, lawyer who was the prosecuting attorney for the city of Chicago; Michael Joseph Nelson, owner of an interior decorating company that produced fine furniture, draperies, and wallpaper; and Alfred Daniel Plamondon, manufacturer of machinery.
All of these men were not only successful businessmen, they were accomplished sportsmen, which led to the founding of the Ellerslie Cross Country Club. The women mentioned – the Keeley sisters, the Walsh sisters, Nellie Fuller Nash – also excelled at sports.
The Ellerslie club was started as a golf club, but the major passions of these Irish sports folks were actually coursing, that is greyhound racing and hunting; and equestrian sports, “riding to the hounds.”
There will be three more posts in this series: Ellerslie as a golf club; greyhound coursing; and cross-country horseback riding through the southwest suburbs.
Ridge Historical Society
Irish-American Heritage Month: The Ellerslie Cross Country Club
By Carol Flynn
March is Irish-American Heritage Month, and a new research project has revealed another connection that the Irish had to the Blue Island Ridge in the early days.
The Irish were an important presence in Beverly decades before they started building their homes and churches here in appreciable numbers in the 1920s. They first came here for sports and socializing.
It was a group of wealthy Irish American Catholic businessmen who introduced golf to the Blue Island Ridge by starting the first “country club” here, the Ellerslie Cross Country Club, in 1899.
The club was located at the southwest corner of 91st Street and Western Avenue, where today a strip mall stands. The land is part of Evergreen Park, but back then, it was often referred to as Beverly. The club itself identified its location as “between Beverly Hills and Evergreen Park, Chicago.”
Country clubs started being established in the U.S. in the 1880s due to the newfound interest in the sport of golf. Clubs in the U.S. followed golf clubs started in Great Britain.
Stick and ball games had been around for centuries when “modern” 18-hole golf evolved in Scotland in the mid-1400s. The word “golf” is a Scottish derivation of the Dutch word “colf” meaning stick, bat, or club.
Scottish royalty, including Mary Queen of Scots, enjoyed the game, and brought it to London, but it didn’t become popular there until the late 1800s. By 1887, England had 50 golf courses and in 1890 held the first Open Championship.
Golf came to America with the English colonists, but again, did not become really popular until the 1880s.
By this time, the basic philosophy concerning exercise was changing. Sports were considered a distraction from more important activities, but as lifestyles switched from rural to city, that is from farming to industrial, the need for exercise started to become apparent. Not only was this for physical health, but it was believed that regular exercise would improve people’s “civic morality” and make them better “American citizens.”
Athletic clubs existed in the cities as men-only indoor gymnasiums that offered gymnastic exercises and weightlifting equipment, and some had boxing rings. At this same time, rowing, swimming, track and field, football, and baseball were becoming college sports.
Tennis, also imported from Great Britain [note: Mary Queen of Scots enjoyed tennis as well as golf], was catching on in the U.S. at the same time as golf, and tennis courts were popping up on estates and other locations.
However, golf necessitated large outdoor spaces, leading to private golf clubs established on the outskirts of cities, in the “country,” giving rise to "country clubs."
The term “country clubs” had been used informally to refer to rural baseball teams, and a group of writers had started an organization they called "The Country Club,” but the term primarily became associated with “golf clubs.”
The first such club established in Chicago was the Chicago Golf Club founded in 1893 in Belmont (Downers Grove) and later relocated to Wheaton.
Country clubs established elite subcommunities and are considered the forerunners of gated communities. They almost always had a limited, exclusive membership, and high membership fees.
Membership in the majority of clubs formed by those of the Anglo Protestant establishment was open only to fellow Anglo Protestants and excluded Catholics, Jews, African-Americans, Native Americans, and other groups.
The names associated with the Chicago Golf Club were from Chicago’s highest social echelons, including Marshall Field, Potter Palmer, and Eugene S. Pike.
Country clubs looked and worked differently than traditional clubs. They were more family oriented. Women were allowed to participate in golf and some clubs even allowed women to subscribe on their own without going through a male family member.
There were also activities for children, including play areas. Family picnics were typical social events at country clubs.
By this time in Chicago, the Irish had advanced in education, business, and politics, creating a growing subcommunity of wealthy Irish Catholics. They formed their own clubs, such as the Sheridan Club in 1888.
The Sheridan Club was founded in honor of General Phillip Henry Sheridan, the son of Irish Catholic immigrants, who had an outstanding career as a U.S. Army officer. He was a Union Army general during the Civil War; commanded the Illinois troops when martial law was declared in Chicago following the Great Chicago Fire in 1871; was named Commanding General of the U.S. Army in 1883; and was promoted to the equivalent of today’s five-star general in 1888, the year he died.
The “leading spirit” of the Sheridan Club, as he was referred to in the Chicago papers, was Michael Cudahy who had emigrated from County Kilkenny, Ireland, as a child.
Starting employment at the age of 14, Cudahy worked his way up to meat inspector, then into a partnership in the Armour and Co. meat-packing business, before starting his own meat-packing house. He developed oil fields in Oklahoma, and real estate in Mackinac Island, Michigan, and Los Angeles, California.
Sheridan’s and Cudahy’s careers were examples of how the Irish were advancing in the U.S.
Other members of the Sheridan Club, friends and fans of Sheridan and Cudahy, all successful Irish Catholic businessmen, started the Ellerslie Cross Country Club. They did not live in Beverly, but they were making their homes on the south side of Chicago.
In the next post, we’ll look at some of the people involved in the Ellerslie Cross Country Club and the events held by the Club.
Irish American Heritage MonthJames H. Gately, Sr.
St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone for another year, but it’s still March, Irish American Heritage Month. This year’s theme was to celebrate our Irish ancestors, their legacies, and their values.
This year’s “Irishman on the Ridge” feature article in the Beverly Review is on James H. Gately, Sr., who lived in Beverly for more than 40 years.
Gately earned acclaim and prosperity as the proprietor of Gatelys Peoples Store, located on Michigan Avenue in the Roseland neighborhood. Gatelys was THE place to shop for South Siders for over sixty years.
Gately was one of the early Irish Catholic businessmen who achieved success in realizing the “American Dream” who put down roots in Beverly. Five generations of the family have called Beverly “home.”
This begins a series on James H. Gately, Sr.
https://www.beverlyreview.net/news/community_news/article_7ba8584c-e610-11ee-bd66-47c716be9f6c.html
The Parade and the Weather
“Don't bring around a cloud to rain on my parade” is a memorable line from a song in the musical “Funny Girl.”
While in the song the line is a metaphor about not interfering in another person’s life, it is a reminder that the weather always plays a part in any outdoor event like a parade.
Springtime weather in Chicago is especially unpredictable and changeable, and St. Patrick’s Day parade plans always factor in the weather. Uncooperative weather doesn’t mean the parade will be canceled; in fact, that would be a very unlikely occurrence. It just means some adjustments may have to be made.
The most rain that ever fell on St. Patrick’s Day when a parade was held downtown was recorded as 1.42 inches in 1965. The Chicago Tribune described the precipitation that Wednesday as a mixture of snow, sleet, and freezing rain.
City crews worked from the early morning on to clear the parade route, and despite gusts of wind up to 52 miles per hour, the parade went on as scheduled.
Thousands of people lined State Street to watch. Entries in the parade included 60 floats and 41 marching bands.
The mayor of New Ross, Wexford, Ireland, a guest of Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley, recorded the entire parade with his “motion picture camera.”
Other extreme weather days for parades when they were held right on March 17th include coldest and hottest.
The coldest St. Patrick’s Day on record in Chicago occurred on a Saturday in 1900, when the overnight temperature was one degree below zero. The newspapers reported the parade took place with a daytime temperature of sixteen degrees in blinding whirlwinds of snow and biting wind blasts. The streets were slippery frozen mud.
Despite the weather, or maybe partly due to it, enthusiasm was high on parade day. More than 3,000 people marched or rode in the parade, and many more lined the streets and cheered them on.
Irish and American flags and organization banners whipped wildly in the wind and musicians played with numb fingers. An Irish jaunting car, a special feature of the parade, “bounced and pitched and rolled and slid” through the frozen mud but made it to the parade’s end.
The parade lasted for two hours in that freezing cold.
The record high temperature for St. Patrick’s Day was 82 degrees in 2012.
Over 350,000 parade goers that day enjoyed the warm weather so much, reported the Tribune, that two men jumped into the Chicago River, which was dyed green for the day per custom. After they were fished out, one ran away and the other was ticketed by the police.
A visitor from Georgia lamented there was no snow; she was hoping to experience some Chicago winter weather. Chicagoans were not sorry to disappoint her. If she had been here 112 years earlier, she could have experienced the worst there was to have.
This year, the weather for St. Patrick’s Day and the South Side Irish Parade is expected to be 40 degrees with no rain, which actually fits right into the norm for this time of year.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
March – Irish American Heritage Month – Post 3More on the Sheepfold/Icehouse
The post on St. Patrick’s Day about the sheepfold and icehouse built on Thomas Morgan’s estate in North Beverly by John Lynch was well received – almost 4,000 people have been reached so far. However, that post only covered part of the story. Since the topic proved to be a hit, here are more details about that structure.
John Lynch was seventeen years old when he arrived in New York from Ireland in 1842. Although his individual story is not known, it’s likely that he joined the many thousands of his fellow Catholic countrymen driven by hardship to leave their native country and seek out new opportunities.
Lynch encountered wealthy English Protestant Thomas Morgan who had purchased thousands of acres of land on and surrounding the Ridge. In 1844, according to Andreas’ History of Cook County (1884), Lynch arrived on the Ridge, and worked for Morgan for seven years, until Morgan’s death in 1851. Lynch then bought his own land around 105th and Throop Streets, which he farmed.
It appears that young Lynch helped Morgan build and manage his estate. Morgan brought some livestock with him from England on his private ship, and probably purchased more once in the U.S. Enclosures to protect the livestock from wolves and the harsh Chicago winters were necessities. Also, ice cut in winter could be stored in subterranean rooms for a supply in summer. This helped with food preservation.
The Andreas book includes the following information on the sheepfold and icehouse that Lynch built, in true Irish fashion, on the Morgan estate. The information was shared by Isaiah T. Greenacre, an attorney who grew up in Washington Heights.
“Directly in front of the dwelling [the remains of Morgan’s house, Upwood] and on the slope of the hill is a stone structure, or rather a large pit, lined with a stone wall, which wall extends, or once did, far above the top of the hill, but of late years, time has reduced it nearly to a parallel with the hillside. At the east side of the wall and at the base of the hill, is an immense opening, once composed of two tremendous oak doors (now broken and probably used for kindling wood) fastened to the wall by enormous iron hinges that reached across each door. The walls are built of very rough stone. Mr. J. Lynch, Sr., the contractor of this wall, quarried the stone of Blue Island, and did the hauling of the stone and all; he alone having to play the part of stone quarrier, teamster and stone mason. It must have been a very tedious job. On entering this pit, which seems to have answered the purpose of a sheepfold, you find its floors to be composed of bits of stones, in all probability fragments of the wall, and other rubbish, likely the accumulation of years. On the west side and leading in toward the hill is an opening in the wall. On crossing the threshold of what was once a doorway, you imagine yourself about to descend into the depths of darkness by a subterranean passage. But ‘ere you have walked within the distance of about thirty-six inches, you presently find yourself in a round turret shaped cell, with an oval ceiling. In the ceiling is an opening which leads to the surface of the ground. This opening is covered by an immense stone placed over the hole where it makes its appearance on the hill. This cell is built of brick, and unlike the sheep-fold it has a good stone floor. It seems that at one time there was a door dividing the cell from the fold. It seems the cell answered the purpose of an icehouse, and the opening a mere ventilator. The place seems to have stamped on its surface everywhere antiquity.”
The sheepfold/icehouse opened onto what is now Longwood Drive between 91st and 92nd Streets. There is nothing left of the building today, but pieces of limestone from the structure appear to have been used for other purposes in the area.
The current houses on this site have a limestone wall in front of them that possibly is made from the remains of the sheepfold/icehouse. The house at 9122 S. Longwood Drive was owned and turned into an apartment building by architect John Todd Hetherington in the 1920s.
March – Irish American Heritage Month – Post 2
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Today we present part 2 of how Beverly became an Irish Catholic community.
Although founded by Protestants from England and other northern European countries, from the earliest days on, there was always an Irish Catholic presence on the Ridge.
One person was John Lynch (1825-1890), who came in 1844 to work for Thomas Morgan, the wealthy English Protestant who bought thousands of acres on and around the Ridge, and for whom Morgan Park is named.
Lynch, born in Ireland, worked for Morgan for seven years before buying his own farmland around 105th and Loomis Streets.
The young Lynch helped Morgan build and manage his estate. In true Irish style, Lynch built a substantial sheep cote and subterranean icehouse from limestone he quarried and dragged from Blue Island. Nestled into the Ridge, the structure opened onto what is now Longwood Drive between 91st and 92nd Streets.
Lynch married Margaret Martin (?-1874) from Ireland, and they had three children. Their descendants have lived on the Ridge for many generations.
More than a million Irish people emigrated from their homeland during and after the Irish Famine years of the 1840s. The Irish Catholic population grew in the Chicago area.
There were also German and French Catholics in the area. The first Catholic parish serving the northern part of the Ridge, Saint Margaret of Scotland, began as a mission church operated by St. Benedict Church of Blue Island sometime around 1861. St. Benedict Church was founded for the German Catholic population working on the canal. Sacred Heart Mission Church moved from Alsip to its present location at 117th and Church Streets to serve the French Catholics working in the local brickyards.
As part of Washington Heights, Beverly was annexed to the City of Chicago in 1890. West Beverly and Morgan Park followed in 1914 and Mount Greenwood joined the city in 1927.
The next post will cover the founding of St. Barnabas Parish.
March 2021 – Oscar Wilde’s visit to Chicago – part 1
St. Patrick’s Day is over but it’s still National Irish American Heritage Month, so we can fit in one more Irish story.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854. He is considered one of the greatest Irish writers. He wrote poetry, essays, and articles. His plays, such as The Importance of Being Earnest, considered his masterpiece, continue to be performed today. He also wrote fiction, mainly short stories, and his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a classic.
Many people know him for his epigrams, or brief statements that are memorable and interesting. There are hundreds of great Wilde quotes, and some good ones include:
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
“The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously – and have somebody find out.”
“They've promised that dreams can come true – but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.”
“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”
“I can resist anything except temptation.”
“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.”
This could go on for pages.
Before Wilde became famous for his literary career, however, he was already a celebrity and media sensation. As a young man, only in his 20s, he became the embodiment of, and spokesperson for, the Aesthetic Movement.
Aestheticism as a philosophy emphasized pleasing the senses and emotions through beauty and good taste as more important than moral, political, or societal concerns. It was primarily an art movement although it influenced other phases of life. It grew out of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of the mid-1800s through people like artist/poet Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and influenced such artists and designers as William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Aestheticism advocated “art for art’s sake” rather than art for any other purpose such as a moral lesson or political statement.
Oscar Wilde was raised by parents who were considered intellectuals. His father was Ireland’s top eye-and-ear surgeon, running his own hospital. He was knighted in 1864. Sir William Wilde also wrote on Irish archeology and folklore. He was known for his philanthropy, treating the poor for free at the back of Trinity College in Dublin.
Wilde’s mother was an Irish nationalist, strongly supporting freedom from English rule. Lady Jane Wilde was an early advocate for women’s rights and education for women. She spoke ten languages fluently. She was a poet, she wrote for fashionable magazines, and she collected and wrote about Irish folklore.
Oscar had an older brother, and a younger sister who died at age 9 from meningitis. Oscar and his brother were baptized in both the Church of Ireland (Protestant) and the Roman Catholic Church, according to his biographers. He had a lifelong fascination with Catholicism, and even traveled to Italy as a young man to meet the Pope, but he did not really practice in either church.
When Oscar was young, the Wilde home was a site for cultural and social life in Dublin, and he met many of the leading writers, artists, politicians, scientists, and “influencers” of the day. He learned to speak German and French fluently. He excelled as a student at Trinity College and Oxford University in England.
When Sir Wilde died in 1876, it was discovered he was practically bankrupt. Lady Wilde lived with her older son Willie and relied upon her writing to make a living. Willie studied law but never practiced. He earned a meager income as a journalist, drama critic, lead newspaper writer, and editor. Willie was considered witty and humorous, but he was plagued by alcoholism and living in his younger brother’s shadow. The brothers lived together during college years, but were estranged for most of their adult lives.
While a student at Oxford University from 1874 to 1878, Oscar Wilde became an advocate of the Aesthetic Movement, influenced by writers/mentors Walter Pater and John Ruskin. Wilde adopted aesthetic mannerisms. He grew his hair long, wore showy outfits, and affected languid dramatic poses. He scorned sports but he occasionally boxed, a sport the Irish love, and famously drove off four fellow students who attacked him.
He decorated his room with symbols of the movement like peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, and art objects. Wilde entertained guests extravagantly, serving them on popular blue china. He famously said, "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china." This became a slogan for his fellow aesthetes.
Next post: Oscar Wilde moved to London and entered society, which led to a trip to the U.S., including Chicago.
The Month of March – Part 6, Conclusion with Frank and Kate Egan
This post will bring to a conclusion our stories about the Frank and Kate Egan family, an Irish American Catholic family that lived on the Ridge one hundred years ago. Their frequent mention in the local newspapers gave us a glimpse into their lives that we don’t often find.
Through Ancestry, we connected with a great-granddaughter who shared some wonderful family pictures and history with us. Another distant relative supplied information via comments on one of the posts. We love connecting with family members of the historical people we profile, and we thank them for their contributions.
We’ll start out with one addendum to Part 5 on the Egan daughters. We found a newspaper picture of Marie Egan DuMais from 1931 that we are including here. She was installed as the chief ranger of the St. Margaret’s chapter of the Women’s Catholic Order of the Foresters. Her sister Florence was named treasurer.
March is National Women’s History Month, National Irish American Heritage Month, National Nutrition Month, and National Craft Month, and the Egans brought all four themes together for us.
The cement block house that the Egan family built at 1414 West 95th Street has to be the ultimate craft project. Mother Kate Egan was much of the creative force behind the project. The house became the center for family activities. There were many newspaper mentions of them entertaining there. Kate came from a large family and out-of-town relatives – from Denver, Austin, Seattle, Los Angeles, New Mexico – stayed at Kate’s house.
At one time, assuming during the Great Depression and World War II years in the 1930s – 40s, when families looked for new ways to bring in income, the Egan family ran the house as a “tourist lodge,” and advertised permanent rooms for men. This was the time that “motels” were beginning – “MO-tor” and “ho-TEL” combined – indoor rooms to stay in conveniently located along major autoroutes, replacing earlier motor camps.
It was mentioned in the papers several times that Kate suffered from severe flare-ups of “rheumatism,” which back then encompassed osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and any other illnesses that affected the joints. Rheumatology was just coming into its own as a medical specialty.
Kate stayed active with her grandchildren. One article had her going to two First Communions, the Lane Tech High School prom at the Medinah Temple, and graduation for the grandson who had the prom, all in a space of two weeks. Her grandchildren, and nieces and nephews, were frequent guests at the big house.
In 1927, Frank and Kate Egan and Phillip DuMais donated the statue of St. Margaret of Scotland for the new church the parish was constructing. The statue was in memory of Bernard Egan, the son who died of influenza in the army during WWI, and George DuMais, the husband of Marie Egan, killed in an accident at the Blue Island train yard. The statue can be seen in a niche high above the outside front doors of the church, right below the roofline.
Frank and Kate celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1933 with a Mass at St. Margaret of Scotland Church, a breakfast, and an open house for friends during the day. One article brought up some reminiscences by the couple.
During the Great Chicago Fire, when he would have been just 14 years old, Frank hitched up his father’s express team to help people rescue their household goods. Apparently, the frightened horses ran away and there was an accident; the chaos and danger in the streets at the time can only be imagined.
Their 50th anniversary coincided with the beginning of the Century of Progress, and Frank recollected he managed an exhibit in the Machinery Hall during the 1893 World’s Fair. It could have related to sewing machines, as his expertise was in that area.
Frank died on December 1, 1939, at the age of 82, and was waked at their home, then buried from St. Margaret of Scotland in Mt. Olivet Cemetery.
In 1941, daughter Marie held a surprise 77th birthday party for her mother Kate.
Kate died on January 22, 1947, at the age of 82. Her last story involves her funeral procession from St. Margaret of Scotland Church and burial in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Kate was buried the same day in the same cemetery as was Al Capone, the infamous bootlegger from the days of Prohibition. Capone, aged 48, died in his home in Florida, and his remains were brought up to Chicago for burial. At that time, Capone’s father and one brother were already buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
It was a freezing cold, windy day, February 5, 1947, when the funeral cortege for Capone arrived at the cemetery at the same time as that of Kate Egan and her family. Fifteen limousines conveyed Capone’s mother, wife and son, brothers, and other family members and friends. A few “gawkers” and media people braved the cold to watch. There were about forty people in attendance, very small by standards set during the 1920s for gangsters. The service was said by Monsignor William Gorman, the chaplain of the Chicago Fire Department, who had been Capone’s mother’s parish priest at one time. The ceremony was brief, and the family did not linger.
According to Egan family folklore, the family was scandalized that famous people turned out for Capone’s funeral and it was conducted by Monsignor Gorman, while a good Catholic mother like Kate got only a small cortege and a local priest.
Of course, a good Catholic mother like Kate was the expected norm, and Kate couldn’t possibly have competed for public attention with a notorious bootlegger and alleged murderer who dominated Chicago and the newspapers for over a decade.
One paper reported that Msgr. Gorman did say at Capone’s gravesite that the ceremony was “to recognize his penitence and the fact he died fortified by the sacraments of the church. The church never condones evil, nor the evil in any man’s life.”
The Capone graves were later relocated to Mount Carmel Cemetery, but the Capone gravestone still stands in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
However, this was not a story about Al Capone. This was a story about a typical Irish American Catholic family who lived on the Ridge one hundred years ago and contributed to the rich history of the community.
This concludes the series on the George F. Egan family.
The Month of March – Part 4, Wrap up on the Egan Family – Sons George and Bernard
This post continues our story on the Frank and Kate Egan family, an Irish American family who lived on the Ridge one hundred years ago.
The Egans became famous for building a concrete-block house on 95th Street in the 1910s, doing all the work themselves. They lived in the house for almost four decades.
They often shared information about their activities with Pauline Palmer, the reporter for the “Ridge and Morgan Park News” section of the Englewood Times, so this gives us a glimpse into the social lives of a Ridge family. Mrs. Palmer only lived a few blocks away from the Egans and surely they were acquaintances.
Also, through Ancestry.com, RHS connected with the great-granddaughter of Frank and Kate Eagan, and she generously shared photos and family information with us. We are very grateful for that.
Here are some “moments in time” from the Egans.
A lot of Irish Catholic families, especially “older” generations, will relate to this story. The one thing many Irish Catholic mothers set their hearts on was that one son would become a priest. Denied the right to practice their faith in their own country for so many years by the British government, and experiencing a great deal of anti-Irish Catholic sentiment in the U.S. by the established Anglo-Protestant leadership, Irish Catholics tenaciously clung to the Church in the U.S. Priests were not only spiritual leaders, they were social and political leaders, also. They were local celebrities.
According to Egan family folklore, oldest son George, Jr., was apparently slated for the priesthood, at least in his mother Kate’s viewpoint, until he met and married Emily Biggs. George became an electrician, and in 1919, they moved to the north side in the Irving Park area, and eventually had seven children.
Undoubtedly, Kate was disappointed that George did not become a priest. But there are entries in the social notices that George and Emily were guests of his parents, and their children were also entertained at their grandmother’s house.
In addition, Kate stayed with George and Emily for two weeks in 1918 when Emily was ill with influenza and pneumonia. At least one of the children was also ill with bronchitis.
In 1920, there was an entry that Emily Biggs Egan received notice that she and her descendants were beneficiaries in a large estate left by a deceased aunt and uncle. Surely that was welcome news.
In previous posts, we’ve shared that the Egans’ second son, Bernard, died from influenza and pneumonia at the age of 24 in a military hospital in Texas. According to the newspaper, he died on Thanksgiving Day, 1918. His mother Kate and sister Florence traveled down to Texas to arrange to have his body returned to Chicago.
The solemn high Mass, at St Margaret of Scotland Church, and burial in Mount Olivet Cemetery took place in February 1919, likely delayed by weather and the ground too frozen for the burial.
In 1917, the newspaper carried several stories about Bernard. We posted before that it was Bernard who made the first cement bricks that were used to cover the garage and begin the house, and he did most of the building of the foundation and first floor. Now he was traveling throughout the East Coast and Canada as a representative of the Bates Valve Bag Company, which produced machines for packing cement and like substances.
He came home for Easter, and that summer, it was reported he was home for a brief visit before he left for a long trip through South America.
Pauline Palmer reported, “Mr. Egan has been very successful and the neighborhood is proud of him.”
Whether any of that trip took place before Bernard enlisted in the Army isn’t reported. It also isn’t reported what kind of service action Bernard saw once he did enlist. Eighteen months later he died in Texas.
Losing Bernard was a tragic blow to the family. For several years, on Thanksgiving Day, Bernard was remembered at St. Margaret’s Church with services in his honor.
In 1927, St. Margaret of Scotland Parish began the construction of a new church. The paper reported that Frank and Kate Egan were donating a statue of St. Margaret to the new church in memorial to Bernard and to their son-in-law George Dumais who was killed in 1924.
Bernard lost his life in the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19. Other family members were also very sick that year. Kate was ill in October. Daughter-in-law Emily was ill in November and daughter Florence in December. Frank, the father, was very ill with influenza in the spring of 1919. Fortunately, they all survived.
Next post: Egan daughters Florence and Marie.
The Month of March – Part 2 on the George F. Egan Family
An interesting development has occurred since the first post on the George F. Egan family a few days ago. Through Ancestry, we were able to connect with the great-granddaughter of George and Katherine Egan, and she has graciously given us permission to share some pictures and additional information from the family.
George Francis “Frank” and Katherine Theresa “Kate” Murnan Egan and their descendants were a pretty typical Irish American family living on the Ridge one hundred years ago – typical, that is, except for the house they built at 1414 West 95th Street, which received a lot of media attention. As March is National Irish American Heritage Month, National Women’s History Month, and National Craft Month, the story of their house ties all three themes together, and we will get to that in the next post.
Some additional information we have on the family itself is that George Francis Egan always went by “Frank,” and he was a trustee for the Village of Fernwood in the 1880s. Fernwood was a small area to the east of Washington Heights that annexed to the city of Chicago in 1891.
According to the family, Frank and Kate were small in stature. Frank stood only 4 feet eleven inches tall, and Kate was only 4 feet 10 inches.
Frank worked as a tailor with the Singer Sewing Machine Company during World War I, and made puttees, or leggings, for the soldiers. A newspaper article reported that Frank also worked for years before that with the W. H. Wiley and Son Company, based in Connecticut, where he was in charge of the Chicago factory in which over-gaiters and leggings were made. These eventually went out of fashion, and the factory closed. A copy of an ad for this company is attached, showing the products made there.
The U.S. Census records list that Kate and Frank had seven children, but only four lived to adulthood. These four were identified in the first post and are included in the pictures here. Two sons and a daughter died young; one son was only five years old and the other two are assumed to have died as infants. This type of mortality rate was only too prevalent back then.
Pictures of the family are attached, from user submissions on Ancestry. Each picture is explained in its caption.
Next: The house at 1414 West 95th Street.