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.
2024
History and Art This Weekend
I’ve been remiss with sharing stories on this Ridge Historical Society (RHS) Facebook page lately because I’ve been very busy doing research on topics that will lead to interesting new stories.
Tomorrow, May 19th, is the Beverly Area Planning Association (BAPA) Home Tour, where five homes and one facility will be open for touring. I don't know all the houses (it's a surprise!) but I know the historic Hopkinson-Platt House at 108th and Drew Street will be open, and that is not to be missed!
This is one of the best home tours in the city. The tours were actually started many years ago by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.), and then RHS ran them for a while, and now BAPA does a superb job with them.
The tour will start at Smith Village Senior Living facility at 113th Place and Western Avenue. This is where people will pick up their packets and have a chance to tour the first-floor common areas. One sight to see is the mural by the late Jack Simmerling called “Life on the Ridge” that covers a wall in one of the dining rooms.
I will be there from 12 to 3 p.m. to discuss the mural and help people identify locations, so please stop by! As one viewer said, “This was like taking a walk through the neighborhood of my youth.” There are current buildings and some that are now gone depicted in the mural.
The other place to visit is the historic Eugene S. Pike House at 91st and Longwood Drive, which the community has adopted for preservation. The Beverly Area Arts Alliance will be holding an outdoor event there, “Arts in the Yard@the Pike House”, with music and art activities, including Robin Power demonstrating ceramics.
One of the highlights will be a new painting of the Pike House by Beverly artist Judie Anderson. Judie has captured the Pike House in its whimsical, “fairy-tale” persona. The American Institute of Architects once commented about the house that you expect to see Hansel and Gretl come skipping down the path, and Judie’s watercolor brings that to mind. Judie is calling the painting “The Watchman’s Residence,” because that is what it was known and used as by the Forest Preserves of Cook County, which owns the house. Prints will be available for a donation, and Judie will be there to sign them.
Topics coming up next on the RHS Facebook page are many: the return of the 17-year cicadas known as Brood XIII; the next installment in the “Lost and Found” series; more posts on James H. Gately; the 100th anniversaries of Smith Village and St. Barnabas Parish; and stories about the many families who called the Pike House “home” are just a few. Stay tuned.
Mother’s Day One Hundred Years Ago
The modern Mother’s Day in the U.S. grew out of the peace movement following the U.S. Civil War. Peace activists Ann Reeves Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe called for a “Mother’s Day for Peace” when mothers collectively would advocate that their children not be sacrificed as soldiers in wars.
When Ann Reeves Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter Anna Jarvis wanted to honor her and all mothers, and started a liturgical service in West Virginia. She proposed a national Mother’s Day, and President Woodrow Wilson declared the first officially recognized Mother’s Day in the U.S. in 1914.
Anna Jarvis always wanted the day to be one of prayer, thanks, honor, and personal reflection, and was opposed to the commercialism that crept into the holiday. She protested at a candy makers convention in 1923 and against the sale of carnations for Mother’s Day in 1925, where she was arrested for disturbing the peace.
At this time on the Ridge and nearby areas, the church influence was still very strong, but the commercialism that would come to own Mother’s Day was in evidence.
The Protestant community spent most of their Sundays in church back in those days, and in 1924, the local churches led the way in recognizing Mother’s Day. Everyone was encouraged to attend services “for mother’s sake.”
Church started with Sunday School and one topic that year was “What We Owe Our Mothers.”
The first service of the day offered sermons on topics like “Mother’s Unfeigned Faith” and “A Mother’s Heart.” Printed copies of the sermon “A Godly Mother” were distributed to the congregants at one church.
Choir programs included “Songs Mother Used to Sing.” Duets and solos included “My Mother’s Bible” and “Wear a Flower for Mother.”
Special christening services for children were held.
After Sunday dinner at home, people returned to church for evening services.
Evening services contained entertainment/educational programs as well as liturgical services. At one church, a large men’s chorus sang Mother’s Day songs, followed by a testimony meeting honoring mothers. Another church gave every mother who attended evening service a rose or a tribute booklet. A third church showed a stereopticon on “A Child and His Mother.”
Other social events also went on, usually on weekdays, not on Sunday, because Sunday was for church. Sororities and other groups gave annual Mother’s Day parties, luncheons, and teas that included music and drama programs. At one event. the local paper reported that “Miss Sadie Minrath danced the ‘frisco’ with Miss Anne Green at the piano.” The “frisco” was a popular contemporary dance, the first one set to jazz music.
At the same time, commercial gifts and services were beginning to take hold in the community, and advertisements were appearing in the newspapers.
Greenhouses and florist shops promoted blooming plants and flowers as good gifts for Mother’s Day. Novelty shops promoted commercially made cards, started by the Hallmark Company, and items like stationery. Candy stores promoted special boxes for the day.
Photography studios promoted their services for portraits. Dance studios promoted dancing lessons.
Frank’s Department Store at 63rd Street and Ashland, a popular shopping spot, used the day to advertise women’s shoes, handbags, gloves, and “dotted voile and tissue gingham dresses, trimmed with lace and organdies,” on sale for $2.98, down from $3.50.
As one advertiser put it, the question wasn’t whether or not to recognize your mother on this day, the question was how to do it.
Image from a flower ad, May, 1924.
Historical Monterey Avenue
The research requests the Ridge Historical Society receives include questions from the media looking for background information for stories they are covering.
Last week, our fellow fact seekers at the The Beverly Review, the local newspaper, asked us about the history of the vacant land on the south side of Monterey Avenue between Homewood Avenue and the Metra tracks to the west because a new Dunkin coffee and donut shop is planned to be built on the site.
The researchers at RHS (RHS Historian Linda Lamberty, RHS Board member Tim Blackburn, and RHS Facebook Administrator Carol Flynn) were happy to investigate the question. It proved an interesting challenge to find the answers.
The McCormack Building (attached image from the RHS collection, and note the streetcar tracks in front of the building, running east/west on Morgan Avenue, today's 111th/Monterey) was on that site from 1890 to 1938. This was a three-story building with commercial spaces on the first floor and apartments on the second and third floors. The building had no central heat; each apartment and business had a coal stove.
The McCormack Building was the home for many businesses during its years of operation. Some of the tenants included an early telephone exchange with switchboards and operators, the Morgan Park State Bank, and a Piggly Wiggly store in the 1920s.
Neighborhood shops like the Morgan Park Cash and Carry Grocery, Kordewick’s Meat Market, a bakery, and a shoe shop were also there.
The McCormack Building was replaced by a building that started as a Jewel food store, and later housed the M&R Coffee Depot coffee shop and an electrical appliance contractor. In the 1970s, a group of parents of students at Morgan Park High School (MPHS) opened the Southwest Youth Foundation, a youth center, there.
East of the Jewel building were also an ice cream shop and a dry cleaners.
For many years, the Morgan Park Lumber Co.’s lumber yard extended south behind the buildings on the main street, where apartment buildings now exist. The office for the lumber company was across the alley, right next to the Rock Island tracks to the west.
In the 1960s, this was the location of a coffee shop financed by the Y.M.C.A., run by and very popular with students from MPHS. In fact, RHS’s Linda Lamberty managed the coffee shop kitchen while she was a student at MPHS.
By the 1970s-80s, the commercial area along 111th Street/Monterey Avenue was suffering from “urban blight.” This was a period of transition throughout Chicago. Businesses had moved out and new businesses were not moving in. Buildings were deteriorating. During this time, many of the old buildings along this street, and older frame houses in the area, were demolished.
The land has been vacant for at least 40 years. It is a good location for a Dunkin, right by the 111th Street Metra train station.
More on Aerial Photography
The current Ridge Historical Society (RHS) exhibit, “Louise Barwick’s Lost Ridge,” includes aerial photographs taken in 1899 by young men who attached a camera to a kite and sent it soaring over the community.
As covered in this article in the Beverly Review, in February, a college student from Morgan Park, Ben Johnson, took photos of those same views using drone technology:
https://www.beverlyreview.net/news/community_news/article_6454103a-0192-11ef-b6e6-53a4c44db920.html
Here we present the “then-and-now” photos of the area surrounding the corner of 103rd Street and Longwood Drive, as well as images of the photographers.
For more information on the topic, visit the RHS exhibit on Tuesday and Sunday afternoons from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. RHS is located at 10621 S. Seeley Avenue.
Lost or Found? – Building #1FOUND – Part 2 on the Iglehart House
This new Facebook series from the Ridge Historical Society, “Lost or Found?”, presents photos of buildings in Morgan Park from an 1889 publication, and invites the reader to comment if the building is still standing, and if so, where it is located.
The first building was correctly “found” and identified by several people as the Charles D. Iglehart House at 11118 S. Artesian Avenue. The previous post discussed the house itself. This post will share some information on the Iglehart family.
Charles Duvall Iglehart was born in 1818 to a farming family in Maryland. His father, Richard, was a slave-owner. The Slave Schedule for the 1850 U.S. Census lists eleven enslaved people living at Richard’s residence, ranging from a 7-year-old boy to a 70-year-old woman.
Charles was also listed as part of that residence, with his wife Marietta and an infant son, Jacob. Marietta died shortly after that census was taken, leaving Charles with a motherless Jacob.
In 1853, Iglehart married Elizabeth A. Haslup in the District of Columbia. They had their first child, son Charles, in 1854.
Andreas’ History of Cook County, published in 1884, reported that “C.D. Iglehart and family came in November 1856, and settled … on what is now known as the corner of One Hundred and Eleventh Street, on Morgan and Western avenues.”
Their second child was a daughter, Mary Ann. Andreas claims she was “the first birth in the immediate vicinity of Morgan Park … in 1857.”
However, Mary Ann is buried in Mt. Greenwood Cemetery, and her date of birth engraved on her gravestone is given as January 16, 1856. This is also mentioned on family trees on Ancestry, and one entry lists her birth occurring out east before they left for Chicago.
If Andreas’ date of November for the Igleharts’ arrival in Cook County is accurate, this means that the claim about being the first (white) child born here cannot be accurate – it is quite possibly just urban folklore. The source of the claim that Andreas makes is not mentioned.
Three more children were born to the Iglehart family on the Ridge. Third was Margaret Ellen, who went by Ellen or Nellie, born in 1858; then Thomas born in 1859; and Elizabeth, or Lizzie, born in 1865. Iglehart’s oldest son Jacob was listed living with the family on the 1870 census.
Charles Iglehart was described as an educated, cultured man who attracted the same type of people as guests in his home. The Iglehart family remained in the Morgan Park community for many years. They are credited with starting the second orchard on the Ridge, around 1857 (William Morgan, son of Thomas Morgan, established the first).
They were among the original subscribers to the Morgan Park Baptist Church, which held its dedication in April of 1874. They also were founders of the Church of the Mediator, sitting empty now at 109th Street and Hoyne Avenue.
Charles Iglehart died in 1886 at the age of 68. His family stayed in the house, and on the 1910 census, Elizabeth Haslup Iglehart was listed as the matron of the house. She died in 1917 and was buried with her husband in Mount Greenwood Cemetery.
The three Iglehart daughters lived in the house in 1920, but left within a few years, moving to other locations on the Ridge. The original farm property, which extended at one time from 111th to 115th Street, from Western to Rockwell, was sold for residential and commercial development. When Western Avenue was regraded, widened, and repaved in 1922, the house was moved a block west, and set on a new foundation. A street was later added, Artesian Avenue.
Mary and Ellen were both art teachers, and neither married. Ellen became famous for her work in ceramics, including hand-painted chinaware.
Youngest daughter Lizzie was a widow; her husband Edward James Carson, a salesman, died in 1916. In 1920, she was working as a piano teacher. She had three adult children also living at the house.
The Iglehart daughters were active in the Daughters of the American Revolution, and Lizzie was a contributor to early local history groups. She was a member of the Morgan Park Woman’s Club.
Charles Iglehart’s oldest son Jacob moved to Tennessee, where he practiced as an osteopath. In one directory he was listed as a “magnetic healer.” Magnets have been used for hundreds of years to treat pain and there is some slight research evidence that electromagnetic therapy may be helpful.
The younger sons, Charles and Thomas, went into business together as contractors. Both lived in Morgan Park with their families.
The Wild Ridge by Carol Flynn
The Ridge once was home to wolves (hunted down until they were all killed), sandhill cranes (lost to habitat destruction), and other species that no longer exist in this setting.
However, other wildlife have managed to adapt to the urban environment.
Here are some pictures of wildlife in the area in the last few months.
So many predators (coyote, owl, eagle) means there has to be a fairly strong prey base. The turkey is prey, but its size helps protect it. Rabbits, squirrels and other rodents, and smaller birds are plentiful around here.
The bald eagle is the national bird. Benjamin Franklin advocated for the wild turkey as the national bird. Here they both are, today, in an urban setting on the south side of Chicago. Considering the bald eagle was at the point of extinction just a few decades ago, seeing them now on local rooftops is just amazing. This one seems to recognize a photo op, posing with the U.S. flag.
Credit to Jamie Anderson for the coyote and owl photos. The photos of the eagle and the turkey were shared from other posts.
Paula Everett, president of Mount Greenwood Cemetery Association, and a Board member of the Ridge Historical Society (RHS), and RHS Facebook Page Administrator Carol Flynn (past RHS Board member) made the news again because of the Cemetery being an island of unincorporated Cook County land in the middle of the 19th ward.
They were interviewed by journalist Mariah Woelfel for a segment for WBEZ Chicago, the National Public Radio station.
There is a written article to accompany the recording. Here is the link to access both.
The Ridge Historical Society (RHS) is in the News – with Mt. Greenwood Cemetery
RHS is featured in a brief article in Chicago Magazine and is scheduled to be part of a podcast on Thursday.
It all has to do with the map of the 19th ward. When you look at the map of this little piece of Chicago on the far south outskirts of the city, you see a blank rectangle of unincorporated land in the ward, and that is Mt. Greenwood Cemetery. The cemetery is not incorporated into the city of Chicago, it is on unincorporated land in Cook County.
Mt. Greenwood Cemetery is in between the communities of Morgan Park to the east and Mount Greenwood to the west. Morgan Park was incorporated as a village in 1884 and was annexed to Chicago in 1914, and Mount Greenwood was incorporated as a village in 1907 and was annexed to Chicago in 1927. In all these cases of incorporation and annexation, the cemetery was not included.
To the north of Mt. Greenwood Cemetery is the Ridge Country Club, and that land apparently became part of Chicago in two stages, in 1914 and 1927.
To the south of Mt. Greenwood Cemetery is Mount Olivet Cemetery and south of that is Mount Hope Cemetery, which runs to 119th Street, Chicago’s southern boundary. Originally, none of these three cemeteries were incorporated into the city, so the land that Ridge Country Club is on formed a bridge connecting the east and west sides of the 19th ward.
However, Mount Olivet Cemetery, which is owned by the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, became part of Chicago in 1970. Mt. Greenwood Cemetery and Mt. Hope Cemetery remain in unincorporated Cook County, making Mt. Greenwood Cemetery an island in the 19th ward.
Mt. Greenwood Cemetery is the only one of the three that is entirely within the boundaries of Chicago. Mt. Olivet Cemetery borders on Chicago and Merrionette Park, and Mt. Hope Cemetery borders on Chicago, Merrionette Park, and the City of Blue Island.
Two media outlets, Chicago Magazine and WBEZ, expressed interest in this “phenomenon” recently, contacting Mt. Greenwood Cemetery and RHS with the question, why is Mt. Greenwood Cemetery not part of Chicago? They both neglected to notice that Mt. Hope Cemetery is also on unincorporated land. The cemeteries along Kedzie Avenue, Beverly, Lincoln, and Oak Hill, are also on unincorporated land.
The short answer to the question is no one knows exactly why Mt. Greenwood Cemetery never opted to annex to Chicago, but there are some possible clues.
First is the issue of taxes. Villages annexed to the city to obtain better services, and the landowners in those villages pay taxes for those services. Cemetery owners were not concerned about schools, parks, libraries, streetlights, and sidewalks. There was no reason to become part of the city and pay those taxes.
And the city had no reason to want the cemeteries. By law, abandoned cemeteries could become the responsibility of the city or village they were part of for upkeep and security. Many cemeteries in Illinois are on unincorporated ground.
To be clear, the cemetery is incorporated as a business in Illinois, but it is located on land in Cook County that is not incorporated as part of any municipality.
It was when Mt. Olivet Cemetery became part of Chicago in 1970 that Mt. Greenwood Cemetery became an island in the 19th ward. The real question is why did Mt. Olivet Cemetery annex to Chicago?
The definitive answer to that is not known either, but it could have something to do with private residences being located partially on
cemetery property. Taxes for Mt. Olivet Cemetery would not be an issue. Religious organizations are tax-exempt.
When Mt. Greenwood Cemetery sold off a corner of its property at 111th Street and California Avenue for a townhouse development, the land had to join Chicago before the residences were built.
In 2020, 19th ward Alderman Matt O’Shea expressed interest in annexing Mt. Hope Cemetery to Chicago to increase security and a police presence from the Chicago Police Department. This has not happened. Right now, both Mt. Greenwood and Mt. Hope Cemeteries are covered by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
Sunday, APRIL 28, 2024 – 2pm
Spring Bonnet Tea
RHS is happy to be able to hold this annual fundraiser event again. Join us for a Full Victorian Tea featuring a fine selection of savories, scones and pastries. Ladies, please wear a spring hat or bonnet!
A wonderful multi-generational event — bring your daughters or granddaughters!
This Full Victorian Tea set in the Historic Graver-Driscoll House, on the Ridge in the Beverly Hills neighborhood of Chicago.
Space is limited, advance ticket purchase or RSVP required.
Adults $30 Guests Under 12 $15
Get tickets online: bit.ly/bonnet_tea
RSVP: ridgehistory@hotmail.com 773.881.1675
Tomorrow, April 8, 2024, there will be an eclipse of the sun viewable in the Ridge communities. This is a historic event of the celestial kind.
The sun, the moon, and the earth are all lined up right now so that the moon, on its normal trajectory, will pass between the sun and the earth, blocking the light of the sun from the earth.
On the Ridge, a "partial eclipse" will be viewable, but it is almost full. From North Beverly down to Blue Island, viewers will be able to see a 94.3 – 94.5% full eclipse, from 12:51 p.m. to 3:21 p.m., with the maximum point at 2:07 p.m.
People are advised not to stare directly at the eclipse so the retinas of their eyes are not damaged. Special glasses that are 1,000 times darker than sun glasses, blocking out almost all light, have been available from many vendors, including the Adler Planetarium, Amazon, Walmart, and libraries.
Viewers are advised to use filters to protect the lenses of their cameras, recorders, and phones from being "fried."
Many people are traveling hundreds of miles from Chicago to areas where the full eclipse is viewable. The path passes from southwest to northeast of Chicago.
Undoubtably there will be numerous pictures and videos of the eclipse for people to study.