James Anderson: Early Resident and Store Keeper

Scottish-born James Anderson journeyed to the United States in 1851, at age 20. In 1858, he and his new wife Mary Davis were two of the first residents of the newly established community of Lake Fores...

Forgan Family: Clubmakers and Financiers

James Berwick Forgan was born in 1852 in St Andrews, Scotland where the family made golf clubs in a shop along the 17th fairway of the Old Course. Forgan of St. Andrews is the oldest golf club factory...

Changing the Office Forever: A. B. Dick

Albert Blake Dick (1856-1934), inventor of the mimeograph, was born in Bureau County, Illinois. After working for farm equipment and lumber companies, he established his own Chicago-based lumber enter...

C. Frederick Childs: Expert of Monetary Policy

Born in Brattleboro, Vermont, Charles Frederick Childs graduated from Yale in 1899 and met his future wife Edith Newell on a boat trip around the world. The two were married in 1900, making their home...

Hugh Robertson: At The Zenith of His Profession

Hugh Robertson’s family came to the United States when he was an infant, around 1890, settling in Chicago. He attended business college and found work financing the purchase of cars, but developed an...

Clayton Mark and Family

Born in Pennsylvania in 1858, Clayton Mark was what people in the 19th century called a self-made man, who, though he had little more than a grade school education, became one of Chicago’s most promin...

Cissy Patterson: Publisher and Countess

Eleanor “Cissy” Medill Patterson, journalist and newspaper editor and publisher, was one of the first women to ever head a major daily newspaper, the Washington-Times Herald starting in 1930.

John V. Farwell: Leading Investor and Spirit for Growth

John V. Farwell made his way to Chicago from his family’s western Illinois homestead in 1845 with very little capital; according to one account he arrived “on a load of wheat” with $3.45 in his pocket...

Samuel Insull: Electrifying Chicago

Between arriving in the U.S. as Thomas Edison’s young secretary in 1881 and leaving 50 years later in the wake of antitrust charges, Samuel Insull revolutionized electricity in the Midwest and became...

Thomas Edward Wilson - What Do Stock Yards and Tennis Racquets Have in Common?

Thomas Edward Wilson was born in Canada to a Scottish family, coming to Chicago at age 9. Thomas started work in the stockyards checking railroad cars and counting animals. He rose quickly through the...

The Man Who Almost Invented the Telephone

Elisha Gray (1835-1901) is best known as the person who almost invented the telephone. Raised on a farm in Barnesville, Ohio, he worked as a blacksmith and built boats. He attended Oberlin College, ea...

Toasting Albert Marsh: Nichrome and the Electric T

Albert L. Marsh was granted a patent in 1906 for a new alloy that combined nickel and chromium. The new material, called “Nichrome” glowed cherry-red when heated with an electric current. It was revol...

A Gentler Anesthetic: Dr. Volwiler, Dr. Tabern and Sodium Pentothal

The collaboration of Dr. Ernest Volwiler and Dr. Donalee Tabern at Abbott Laboratories produced several new sedative and anesthetic compounds that contributed significantly to better medical...

Dr. John Martin Littlejohn: A New Way in Medicine

John Martin Littlejohn is considered one of the fathers of osteopathic medicine.He was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1867, where he studied theology, law, medicine and philosophy. A brilliant student,...

The Buchanan Family and Mining Innovations

DeWitt Buchanan Senior and DeWitt Buchanan Junior

While coal mining was a mainstay industry in the eastern mountain states, coal was also abundant in the late 1800s in Illinois. Early settlers mined for the bituminous coal, but there wasn't commercia...

Robert Stuart Jr. Moves Quaker Oats Forward

RobertD. Stuart Jr. (April 26, 1916—May 8, 2014)was born in Hubbard Woods and grew up in Lake Forest, although he spent a largeamount of time out west, at the family ranch in Wyoming. He graduated hig...

Willard Morrison: Idea Man in Shirtsleeves

Willard Morrison (1892-1965) was born in Lynn, Massachusetts. His father purchased an early car and by the age of 12, Willard Morrison was teaching people to drive and fix their cars. While at Boston...

Mary Williams Casselberry

Pushing Medicine Forward

Granddaughter of a midwife, daughter of a nurse, medicine was in Mary Williams Casselberry’s blood, so to speak. After graduating with honors from DuSable High School in Chicago, she pursued this inte...

Robert Bacon

Written by Caroline Lauber

Dr. Robert J. Bacon, Sr. (1921-2009) was born in Como, Mississippi on the Taylor Plantation. His family moved north as a part of the Great Migration to Illinois where they settled in Lake Forest. His...