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.
September 2023
BEVERLY ART WALK ALERT!!
There is plenty of entertainment as part of the Beverly Art Walk.
The only place you'll be able to see Irish dancers, though, will be at the Ridge Historical Society.
Dancers from Weber Irish Dance will perform at RHS at 1:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.
Irish dance is a significant part of Irish culture, history, identity, and of course, the performance arts. It doesn't have to be St. Patrick's Day to enjoy a good Irish jig!
Traditional Irish dancing was taught by traveling dance masters across Ireland in the 1600s and 1700s, and regional and local variations developed.
Modern Irish dancing developed from traditional Irish dancing, with some influence from later country dancing and possibly even quadrilles as Irish dancing spread with the migrating Irish people and became popular world-wide in the 1800s.
RHS is located at 10621 S. Seeley Avenue, Chicago. Park on Seeley Avenue and walk down the driveway to the house. RHS will be open from 12 noon to 5:00 p.m. for the Art Walk with many activities.
BEVERLY ART WALK today at the Ridge Historical Society
10621 S. Seeley Avenue, 12 noon to 5:00 p.m.
Louise Barwick’s name should be on the list of Beverly artists participating in today’s Art Walk. Her works will be shown at RHS.
Miss Barwick lived from 1871 to 1957. She was an artist and an educator. Her watercolor paintings of local scenes from the late 1800s – early 1900s give the community an amazing insight into what life was like here in the past. RHS has over a dozen of her paintings in the collection.
Fields of daisies. Horse-drawn coaches delivering young ladies to dances. Bridges over long-gone streams. Lamp lighters lighting gas streetlamps. All of these scenes are part of “Louise Barwick’s Lost Ridge.”
The watercolors are just part of Miss Barwick’s story. She has an amazing history – she was a woman ahead of her time. She was famous for her three-dimensional map-modeling skills and was featured for that at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
Visit RHS today to see this new exhibit, and to observe artist Robin Power’s demonstrations of pottery-making and the dancers from Weber Irish Dance.
The Ridge Historical Society congratulates and thanks the Beverly Area Arts Alliance for another successful Beverly Art Walk. It was a great day; RHS had many new visitors.
Special thanks to Robin Power for her pottery demonstrations. She did this for five hours and people really enjoyed it.
Photo by C. Flynn: Robin Power (left) helps visitor Audrey Moore learn how to use a pottery wheel. It was Audrey's first try ever, and she left very happy with a nice pot she made herself. Now she is going to look into pottery classes!
Bessie Sutherland
Happy Belated Birthday to Bessie Sutherland, the namesake of the Elizabeth H. Sutherland Elementary School at 10015 S. Leavitt Street in Beverly, Chicago.
Bessie was born as Elizabeth Bingle Huntington in Blue Island on September 27, 1851. Her father, Samuel D. Huntington, farmed and raised livestock, was involved in the railroads, and was Constable and Sheriff for a number of years.
Her mother, Maria Robinson Huntington, was possibly the first schoolteacher on the Ridge. In 1842, at the age of 14, Maria was making $1 per week to teach school. No record of any school earlier than that has been found.
Bessie graduated from the Cook County Normal School in 1869. “Normal” schools trained teachers in the “norms” of education standards of the day. That school evolved into Chicago State University.
She taught in Blue Island, Hyde Park, and Washington Heights. She took additional coursework at the University of Chicago. Along the way, she moved north on the Ridge to 107th Street and Prospect Avenue.
In 1883, she was named Principal of the Washington Heights School. This was before Washington Heights was annexed to the City of Chicago in 1890. She was the first woman to be named principal of a Cook County school. The school was renamed the Alice L. Barnard School in the 1890s in honor of another pioneering Ridge educator. Alice was the one of the first women to be named a principal of a Chicago public school.
Bessie was a Progressive Era educator and a suffragist. That period was marked by great reforms in all areas. Education saw a major shift from learning by lecture and memorization to learning by doing and experimentation.
One example of Bessie as an educator illustrated the new thinking. When she learned that a camel had escaped from a traveling show and was roaming freely in the local woods, she rounded up the entire school body and took them on an impromptu field trip to observe the animal in a natural setting.
Back then, women teachers were not allowed to marry and keep their jobs. Bessie put off marriage to her “intended,” David Sutherland, until her 43rd birthday in 1894. David, seventeen years her senior, was in real estate with considerable holdings on the south and west sides of Chicago.
David died in 1904, and Bessie continued with Barnard School until she retired in 1923. She died in 1924 and was buried in Mount Greenwood Cemetery. In 1925, the new school built at 100th and Leavitt Streets was named in Bessie’s honor.
RHS Historian Linda Lamberty is related to Bessie Sutherland. In 1974, a 96-year-old mutual cousin of Linda’s and Bessie’s told Linda that Bessie was “a truly wonderful person.” This cousin had known Bessie personally. According to Linda, Bessie was “one of the rare stalwart women” who forged paths for other women.