Ridge Farm Preventorium: A Healthy Place in the Country

North Shore reformers, led by Alice May Dickinson, established Ridge Farm Preventorium in 1914 to provide children living in poor urban conditions an opportunity to improve their health in the country...

Edith Foster Farwell: Lake Forest's Garden Sage

Edith Foster Farwell’s interest in herbs began with a simple cost-benefit analysis. She and a friend ordered plants from a well-known herb grower in Washington D.C. to sell at a Lake Forest Garden Clu...

Richard Reuter: Food for Peace

Humanitarian leader, pacifist and food executive Richard Reuter was born in Queens Village, NY in 1918 and graduated from Amherst College in 1938. With his wife Margaret, he worked to create C.A.R.E....

Helen Culver: Making Lives More Sound and Wholesome

Helen Culver was Lake Forest’s resident “old lady who rode her bicycle all over town,” coming in from her Waukegan Road estate. Her extraordinary, trailblazing life encompassed education, nursing, bus...

Harold Morrison: Service and Science

Harold M. Morrison (1932-2018) was devoted to giving back to his community and those surrounding in countless ways through his life.

Once upon a golf links: Mason Phelps, Marion Phelps Pawlick and the Phelps Family in Lake Forest

The local story of the Phelps family begins with Mason Phelps. He was born in 1885 in Milwaukee to Elliott Hubbard Phelps and Sarah Mason Phelps. His father, Elliott, was a grain broker who lost heavi...

Lake Bluff Children's Home: Comfort and Space for Orphaned Children

For 75 years, from 1894-1969, the Lake Bluff Children’s Home (LBCH) helped more than 100 children annually. The legacy began with the arrival of six homeless children in 1894 from Chicago to be cared...

Just Imagine: Margaret Lindman and the Lindman Marionettes

A Chicago native, Margaret Rohner Lindman came to Lake Bluff about 1948, where during the summers she taught preschool at the Lake Bluff Children’s Home. In the 1950s she taught at Lake Bluff East Sch...

Irene Castle: The Flapper Philanthropist

Irene Castle was a household name long before she moved to Lake Forest. She and her husband Vernon Castle were famous ballroom dancers in the 1910s, lighting up Broadway and appearing in silent movies...

Mary Mathews Dick: Changing Healthcare in Lake Forest

Mary Henrietta Mathews was born in Schenectady, New York, and grew up and attended school in Galesburg, Illinois. She and A. B. Dick were wed in 1892; he had previously been married to her sister Alic...

McClure - Stuart - Hart Family

The McClure-Stuart-Hart family has played such a pivotal role in Lake Forest’s history that it’s difficult to imagine their arrival in town may have hinged on the outcome of a single baseball game. Ja...

Walker Sales

Walker Sales was one of the earliest members of the Lake Forest police force. Born in 1864 in Morganfield, Kentucky, to Emily Sales, he came to Lake Forest around 1890, after years working as a farm l...

Inspired Philanthropy: The Searle Family

Sally and William Searle

Lake Forest resident William “Bill” L. Searle, (1928-2004,) spenthis career at G.D. Searle and Company, a company founded by his great-grandfather. Bill Searle was chairman ofthe 100-year old family...

A New Deal for All: Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins became the first woman to serve as a cabinet secretary when President Roosevelt appointed her Secretary of Labor in 1933. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1902 with a Bachel...

Charles B. Farwell, Senator and Philanthropist

A U.S. Representative and Senator, Charles B. Farwell (1823-1903) was a Lake Forest resident whose family played key roles in the community’s early development and civic affairs. Together with his bro...

Corinne J. Wood: First Female Lieutenant Governor

Long-time Lake Forest resident Corinne J. Wood was born in Barrington, Illinois in 1954. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Illinois and Loyola University School of Law. As an attorne...

Dr. Richard Murphy: Helping Frame Early Lake County

Dr. Richard Murphy, a well-educated Irishman and the brother of Mary Dwyer, left Ireland in the 1820s with William and Mary Dwyer, settling first in New York and then Canada and arriving in the area n...

Judge Mary Maxwell Thomas, Ret.

In August of 1987, Mary Maxwell Thomas was appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court to fill a vacancy as a Circuit Judge of Cook County, Illinois. In 1988 she was elected to that vacancy by over a mill...

Robert McClory: Congressman and Bike Trail Namesake

Not many cyclists know the paved path parallel to the railroad tracks connecting downtown Lake Forest and Lake Bluff is officially the Robert McClory Bike Path. It is named for former U.S. Congressman...

Sylvester Lind: Founder and Four-Time Mayor

Sylvester Lind was a Scottish immigrant who came to Chicago in 1837, in the early days before it was a big city, and found work as a carpenter. He eventually had his own business in Chicago selling lu...

Virginia Fiester Frederick: Forging a Path for Women

Virginia Fiester Frederick was a fashion designer who outfitted hundreds of North Shore women and a politician who served both Lake Forest and the state of Illinois.Born Virginia Heise in 1916, she gr...