From the 1874 DuPage Atlas – Frederick Long

At sixteen years old, Fred Long emigrated from Stuttgart, Germany in 1853 and was living in Naperville by 1856. There is no record of his parents living or being buried in Naperville, so it’s possible he was alone. Fred worked as a cabinetmaker in town and he prospered, opening his own shop as early as 1861.  

Also in 1861, he married Amelia Beidelman, the oldest of ten children born to William and Eliza Beidelman who arrived in Naperville around 1847. Of course, the Civil War was just starting during this time and Fred was drafted in 1863, serving in the 49^th Infantry, and was mustered out as a sergeant. 

 

Fred and Amelia’s only child, Charles, was born in 1868 and the family enjoyed being active members of the town. Naperville’s fledgling fire department started in the 1870s and Fred became a volunteer of Rescue Hook and Ladder Company in 1875. 

 

The illustration from the 1874 Atlas shows the F. Long storefront with an addition to the side. The Sanborn Map from 1886 describes this addition as a “dwelling,” so it seems the Longs may have lived next to their shop. 

 

During those days, woodworkers made coffins as well as furniture, as described in his advertisement. Fred also served as an undertaker and attended mortuary school in the 1880s to expand his business even further.

 

James Nichols, who was a professor at what was then known as North-Western College, partnered with John Kraushar and Fred to launch the Naperville Lounge Factory in 1893. They hired Nichol’s student, Peter Kroehler, as a clerk. The business – and Kroehler – both flourished. Kroehler became a partner in 1896 and bought the company in 1916.

 

Fred and Amelia’s only son, Charles, died at age 30, married, but childless. One of Amelia’s nephews, Oliver Beidelman, who was already working with Uncle Fred, wound up taking over the furniture and the undertaking businesses, passing both along to other family members. It was Oliver who, along with his son “Dutch,” built the brick Beidelman’s Furniture store that is currently on the corner of Washington Street and Jackson Avenue, replacing the shop pictured in the 1874 Atlas. While the funeral parlor space there is still visible, the Beidelman funeral business moved to another downtown location and one in south Naperville. 

By 1911, Fred’s health was failing and his nephew was running the business. He was cared for by Amelia and her sister Ella until his death in 1912 at age 74. The sisters lived together until Amelia died in 1922 and her Beidelman relations continue their business pursuits in Naperville today. 

From the 1874 DuPage Atlas – Milton Ellsworth

Naperville has named a street, a school, and several other locations “Ellsworth” in honor of two men who were influential in town. Father Lewis Ellsworth brought his family to Naperville in 1837 when son Milton was just eight years old. At first, Lewis opened a general store with Milton assisting, but they were also establishing a fruit tree nursery on land east of town that was the site of a fort built during the Blackhawk War, about where the North Central College athletic fields are now.

The nursery was very successful and both Lewis and Milton gave back to the town in a number of ways. Lewis was one of the founding members of the Masonic community and both he and his son served as Masters of Euclid Lodge. Lewis was also a DuPage County school commissioner as well as one of early Naperville’s village presidents.

After years of partnering with his father in the nursery, Milton also became involved in local government, serving five terms as DuPage County Clerk and working for the Internal Revenue Service. In this later part of his life, Milton moved to Wheaton which had become the county seat after the infamous records raid in 1867. 

Milton was married to a Miss Jane Barber and they had three children, one who died in infancy and twins Lewis and Carrie. Carrie never married and worked for her father in the County Clerk’s office. Her brother Lewis, like his father and grandfather, also became a County Clerk.  

Milton’s brother, another Lewis, became involved in government work as well. He moved out to Denver, Colorado, was elected to the Senate there, and was influential in a number of legislative issues for the fledgling state. Apparently serving the public was an Ellsworth family trait. 

Milton died in 1896 at age 67 of cystitis, an inflammation of the bladder. He is buried in the Naperville Cemetery, along with father Lewis and even the Colorado brother Lewis, near the family obelisk.  

From the 1874 DuPage Atlas – J.J. Hunt

Throughout this year, we’ll take a look at some of the homes and businesses featured in the 1874 Atlas Map of DuPage County. First up is the hardware emporium of James. J. Hunt which was located on the northwest corner of Washington and Van Buren, where the restaurant Catch 35 is now.  

Hunt was born in Pennsylvania and learned there to be a blacksmith. He came to Naperville with his young family in 1844 and started by working in another man’s plow shop. Within a couple of years, however, Hunt opened his own blacksmith shop and also ran a livery business.

 

Hunt spent part of the Civil War serving as a captain and then a major in Illinois and in Pennsylvania, but at the same time, he also launched a small scale hardware business, presumably operated by his wife and pre-teen sons who remained in Naperville. After the war, all his efforts went into that business, making Hunt & Son Hardware a downtown staple until his retirement in 1893. 

During his years in Naperville, Hunt served the community as sheriff, fire marshal, justice of the peace, and treasurer. Hunt was also dedicated to Euclid Lodge, the local Masonic organization, holding meetings above his shop and serving as Master of the Lodge eight times. 

 

A story was recorded about how Hunt was able to cool down a clash between some Naperville residents and their more recently-arrived German neighbors during his tenure as a police magistrate. Apparently, while the town was celebrating Independence Day, a dispute arose which “had been bottled up and escaped from such confinements down the throats and thence into the brains of a few otherwise ‘real good fellows.’” 

 

Hunt held positions as a village trustee and village president during the 1860s and 1870s. Then in late 1889, Naperville’s citizens began the process of incorporating from a Village to a City. The vote passed in March of 1890 and Hunt was elected the first mayor of the City of Naperville in April. 

 

When he moved from Pennsylvania, Hunt brought his wife, Nancy, with whom he had ten children, six boys and four girls. Their first two sons died very young and Nancy herself suffered from ill health in mid-life. She traveled out to Colorado to convalesce, but died there at age 48. Hunt remarried a couple of years later to a woman twenty years his junior. Andelusia became mother to the youngest Hunt children, but, sadly, buried three infants of her own. 

 

None of the girls married and Eva, the youngest, eventually moved to Oregon to live near her brother James Everett Hunt. Obviously public service was a family trait because James E. was a senator there. He died in 1933 at age 80 after being hit by a taxi. 

 

James Hunt, the father, died in 1905 at age 83 and was buried in the Naperville Cemetery with full Masonic honors. The Clarion newspaper headline that day was “Passing of a Naperville Pioneer.” 

Naperville 1920 Flashback: Special Christmas Presents

While the 1920s started cautiously, with the country still recovering from the war and the Spanish flu, the decade would go on to enjoy unprecedented prosperity and technological wonders before onset of the Great Depression.

Christmas gifts increasingly included big-ticket items for the home. Kitchens had been evolving with the addition of plumbing and electricity. For years, the kitchen area was mainly a table and some open shelves because wet and messy prep work was done in the scullery or outside while food was stored in a cool larder or cellar. A popular gift in the 1920s was a free-standing cabinet that stored the most often used food prep items and was equipped with flour and sugar dispensers.

Beidelman’s furniture store offered these for sale in The Clarion, one of Naperville’s earliest newspapers. Frederick Long opened the store in 1861 who sold it to his nephew Oliver Beidelman. Family continues to run the shop on Washington Street to this day.

Another in-town furniture store, Friedrich’s, advertised Victrola phonographs for the family, which is also a pricey gift at $99. This shop was on Jefferson in the building where Floyd’s 99 Barbershop currently operates. Charles Friedrich had only recently become the proprietor after having worked for the previous owner, John Kraushar.

It’s funny to see the “young folks” dancing in the advertisement since dancing was mostly frowned upon in Naperville at the time. A member of Naperville High School class of 1933 recalls that at their senior banquet, “none of us in the class were allowed to dance at the Tea Room. Our town was located in the middle of the Bible Belt, and social dancing was still considered in the ‘near occasion of sin’ category.”

As was common, both Beidelman and Friedrich were undertakers as well as furniture makers because coffin-building is similar to furniture-building. Both continue to operate businesses today as Friedrich- Jones Funeral Home and Beidelman-Kunsch Funeral Homes & Crematory.

Naperville 1920 Flashback: Staying in Touch by Phone

The city’s first telephone lines were installed in the 1880s by the Chicago Telephone Company, which in 1920 changed its name to Illinois Bell to represent its growing domain. When the City Council granted the telephone franchise to Chicago Telephone, they also received a number of telephones “free of charge” for the city’s use. 

Few homes or businesses had a telephone in those early years. Philip Beckman’s harness shop, which was on the corner of Washington Street where Jimmy’s Grill currently does business, was among the first, although the shop could only connect with his home. Pine Craig, or as it is known today, the Martin-Mitchell Mansion, also had a phone early on to assist with the brick and tile business the Martins ran out of their home office. The first public phone was installed in Thomas Saylor’s ice cream parlor.

Most phone service subscribers used party lines. The Chicago Telephone Company started pushing a two-party service by 1920 because “Troubles and annoyances, occasionally found on the four-party line, are eliminated,” but party-line services lingered for many years as it was cheaper. Saving money would soon became even more important, of course, due to the Great Depression which was followed by World War II.

Early wall phones required you to crank the magneto, which is a kind of generator, to power a bell that alerted the switchboard operator so you could ask them to connect you. Once your call was over, you cranked again to ring the bell to let them know they could disconnect you. The first candlestick phones also required the assistance of a switchboard operator, but instead of cranking a magneto, you clicked the receiver hook. Rotary phones were already available in 1920, but were not widely used for a few decades. 

To add new subscribers and explain this new-fangled device, telephone companies ran ads in local newspapers, like the one from The Naperville Clarion reminding people not to be “cross” when they get a busy signal. They also published helpful articles in the phone books on how to best use one’s phone. The first phone books were just a dozen or so pages and everyone had a three-digit phone number – except for a couple of special cases. For instance, Edwards Sanitorium’s phone number was “6.”