1913 Naperville Goes up to Bat

To continue our look at Naperville in 1913, let’s play ball!

• Woodrow Wilson threw out the first pitch at the first ever game played by the New York Yankees. (Before then, they were the New York Highlanders.)

• Ty Cobb and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson were at the top of their games and Honus Wagner was the oldest player in the National League – although still playing!

• The Chicago Cubs made Johnny Evers of the famous “Tinker to Evers to Chance” their manager, succeeding Frank Chance.

• And in Naperville, the Exiles Athletic Club was organized to play their first base ball season.

According to Genevieve Towsley of the Naperville Sun, the Naperville Exiles was born when some young men from Ellsworth High School were prevented from organizing a school team by their principal.

The Exiles hired a young Chicago fireman to be their pitcher and played teams from Aurora, Wheaton and Chicago, towns they could get to by Burlington rail. The team included boys named Drendel, Wehril and a few Stengers, familiar families from Naperville’s history.

Recreating vintage base ball games is a popular pastime today, played with period-appropriate uniforms, rules and equipment.

You can see base ball (two words in 1913!) in action and talk with the players about the history when local vintage base ball teams like the Downers Grove Plowboys or the Chicago Salmon play in the area. Check out their websites to see when and where you can watch games.

Celebrating History a Naperville Tradition

Here’s another look back at our town 100 years ago, when the Naperville Chamber was founded.

Of particular note this time around is that May is Community Heritage Month in Naperville. This is an early heads up so you can fit some of the planned events into your calendar.

The Naper Settlement began when Caroline Martin Mitchell bequeathed her home and the surrounding property to the cityin 1936. The house, now known as the Martin Mitchell Mansion, served as a museum until the 1970’s when preservation-minded citizens started moving other landmark buildings onto the property.

But there was a museum in town even before that which was housed on the second floor of the original Nichols Library.

Mary Barbara “Matie” Egermann was appointed to the job of librarian in 1909 and served in that position for the next 41 years.

The Souvenir of the Naperville Homecoming published in 1917 tells us that “In October, 1912, the librarian, Miss M. B. Egermann, opened the museum department, which, today, exhibits rare old treasures of Naperville’s pioneers and other specimens of historical and general interest.”

One of those old treasures was a bible once owned by John Naper, brother of Joseph and one of the original settlers.

In their commemorative booklet from 1931, the Naperville Centennial committee noted that in preparing for the centennial celebration, they used a number of historical resources “together with the documents and newspapers preserved by M. B. Egermann in the historical collection at the City Library.”

Today the Naperville Heritage Society keeps an extensive collection for future posterity and offers many great programs for current enjoyment, such as next month’s Civil War Days.

Learn about more of May’s Community Heritage Month events at the City of Naperville website.

Tradition of Education

To understand Naperville’s school system in 1913, the year the Chamber of Commerce was founded, we should really go back even further.

Education has always been important to Naperville citizens. Our first settlers arrived in July 1831 and established a school already by September. Twenty-two students were enrolled and a teacher, Lester Peet, was hired to teach them for $12 a month.

In 1870, Naperville set much higher goals and successfully wooed Plainfield College away from that town to become our North Central College.

In 1913, respect for education was a simply  a way of life. Naperville’s high school was accredited by the state and other institutions as “meeting or exceeding standards” to prepare students for college level study.

Ellsworth was the “East” side school while the Naper Academy served as the “West” side school. Ellsworth was named for Lewis, the first school commissioner and for Milton, the director of the district. The median teacher salary in this town of 3,500 residents was $760 a year.

Over one hundred high school students attended classes on the upper floors of the first Ellsworth school building, with younger grades taught below. High schoolers didn’t get their own building until it was opened in 1916 on the site of the current Washington Junior High.

Physical education was required of high school students, but in 1913 they didn’t have a gymnasium. Instead they took phys ed in the barely-two-years-old YMCA building on Washington Street.

Calling Naperville-1913

In celebration of the Chamber’s 100th anniversary, let’s take another look at Naperville in 1913. Or rather, let’s listen!

Chicago’s first telephone company was founded in 1878 and the use of the telephone grew tremendously during the last decades of the 19th century.

Originally telephones connected one-to-one. For instance, Naperville’s first private telephone connected Philip Beckman’s home to his harness shop at Chicago and Washington. Eventually switchboards made it practical to connect with anyone.

Early in 1913, the City of Naperville Council resolved that the Inter-State Telephone and Telegraph company be required to furnish seven free telephones per their franchise agreement for the residences of council members Givler, Hiltenbrand, Bowman, Schwartz, Luebcke and Palm.

The meeting minutes don’t say what kind of phone, but both wall units and candlestick units were in vogue then.

The telephone directory gave instructions for use in the front of the book:

“To call the Exchange Office, take the hand telephone from the hook and place at the ear. (If the telephone has a crank attachment for signaling Central, give two quick turns of the crank before removing the hand telephone from the hook.)

The Operator will say ‘Number please?’ Give the exchange name and number of the subscriber wanted...Remain with the telephone at the ear until an answer is received.”

The directory also begs to “call attention to the fact that we maintain a messenger service at each exchange and will call any party with who you wish to talk, even though he has no telephone.”

A little over 350 telephone numbers were listed in the directory from that era, including North-Western College (now North Central), the Naperville Lounge Company (later Kroehler) and W.W. Wickel Drugs (now Oswald’s Pharmacy.)

In February of 1913 the council granted the Chicago Telephone company permission to trim five elm trees on High Street west of Main Street and moved to pay the city’s telephone bill of $13.36.

How the times have changed!

Naperville100 years ago When the Chamber of Commerce was Founded

The Naperville Association of Commerce was founded in 1913. That means our Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce is celebrating 100 years of business promotion and fellowship! So in the coming months let’s climb into the “way back” machine and take a look at Naperville one hundred years ago.

1913 was a pivotal year for our city’s government. The year started with Mayor Francis Granger overseeing eight alderman who represented four wards. In April, however, newly-elected Mayor Francis Kendall became the leader of the newly-formed commission form of government.

Now 100 years later, Naperville is planning to vote in April 2013 on whether to reconsider the ward system we are currently planning. As they say, “everything old is new again.”

Mayor Granger moved with his family from New York City to DuPage County when he was an infant. He was a successful farmer and later president of the First National Bank of Naperville.

Throughout his life he was very involved in the community, including stints as County Supervisor, Highway Commissioner, and Alderman. Granger also served seven years as President of the West Side School Board and spent 30 years as a School Trustee, so it was a natural choice when Indian Prairie School District 204 named a middle school after him.

Mayor Kendall was also involved in our schools. He attended North Central College when it was still North Western and later served both as Superintendent of Naper Academy and principal of Ellsworth School.

Indian Prairie’s Kendall Elementary School, however, is not named for Francis but for his son Oliver “Judd” Kendall, the World War I hero who in 1918 was captured and killed near Cantigny, France.

The Kendalls built onto an older cottage in Naperville to create a gracious family home that now houses Quigley’s Pub and the Jefferson Hill shops.