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...

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...

Dr. Charles Quinlan: Lake Forest's First Physician

Dr. Charles H. Quinlan was born in Albany, New York in 1821; he died in Evanston in 1897. During his nearly 80 years, he became one of the most important contributors to the founding of the City of La...

Captain Israel Parsons Rumsey: Leader and Adventurer

A mere two weeks after the attack on Fort Sumter began the Civil War, Israel Parsons Rumsey co-founded Taylor’s Battery in Chicago, on May 2, 1861. A consummate leader, he was elected Second Lieutenan...

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...

"New" Hotel: Destination Lake Forest

Location: Mayflower between Rosemary and Maplewood, along Lake Michigan

Location: Mayflower between Rosemary and Maplewood, along Lake MichiganIn its first decade, much of the early development of Lake Forest wound its way through the forest and shied away from the lake....

"Old" Hotel: The Hotel that Launched a Community

Walnut and Washington, Lake Forest

Location: Westminster and Walnut, Lake ForestEveryone knew the place to be was the Lake Forest Hotel in 1858. When the three-story, white frame structure opened in the summer, it was the prospective t...

A Leader for Lake Bluff: Solomon Thatcher

Solomon Thatcher Jr., a real estate developer and financier, was key to the establishment of the Lake Bluff Camp Meeting in 1875. A devout Methodist, he was looking for a site to create a religious an...

Rev. Matthew M. Parkhurst: Camp Meeting Preacher

A popular religious leader of the Lake Bluff Camp Meeting Association, Reverend Matthew M. Parkhurst was the pastor of Grace Methodist Church in Chicago on Michigan Avenue. When that Chicago church bu...

Murrie Family

The Murrie family were Lake County pioneers, arriving from Scotland (Perthshire) before 1850. James Murrie was an early Justice of the Peace and John Murrie worked in the Anderson General Store in 188...

O'Neill's Hardware: Everything But the Kitchen Sink

In 1868, Joseph O'Neill opened Lake Forest’s first hardware store, O’Neill’s Hardware. First located on Western Avenue near the current location of Gerhard’s, sales for the initial $1,000 worth of sto...

Map: Lake Forest and environs, 1861

John Griffith: Developing Lake Forest

John Griffith opened his Lake Forest business in 1903 which grew to include real estate, insurance and mortgages. Born in North Wales, he came to Chicago in 1888 and within five years was in Lake Fore...

Samuel Dent: Building Up Lake Forest

Samuel Dent was born around 1835 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Enslaved from birth, he labored as a butler in home of Edmond Elliot. Dent liberated himself in April 1862 when the 19th Illinois Infantry advan...

Map: Lake Forest, 1881

Many streets in Lake Forest changed their names in the 1910s.Depot Avenue --> McKinley AvenueHazel Avenue --> Church StreetLinden Avenue --> College RoadPoplar Avenue --> Rosemary RoadMapl...

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...

Neil N. Campbell: Engineering Lake Forest

Born in Ontario to a Scottish family, Neil N. Campbell first came to work in Lake Forest in 1910, shortly after graduating with a degree in engineering from the University of Illinois. He was promoted...

Michael Fitzgerald: From Soldier to City Supervisor

Born in Boston in 1846, Michael Fitzgerald journeyed to the Midwest as a small boy when his family settled in Milwaukee. At age 16, he enlisted in the Union Army, Company B, First Wisconsin Heavy Arti...

Edward and Laura Monahan: A New Leaf in Lake Forest

For most new Lake Foresters, arrival in town heralded the fruits of successful labors or the dawning of new opportunity. For the Monahans, it signaled reinvention.Edward Monahan was born in Canada in...

James Ferguson Blaikie King

James Ferguson Blakie King was born in 1858 in Old Deer, Scotland. He was a Findlay on his mother’s side. At the age of 20 he accompanied a shipment of Anderson-Findlay Angus cattle to Lake Forest.Kin...

Map: Promoting Lake Forest, 1869

Map: Lake Forest, 1873

Map: Lake Forest, 1881

Many streets in Lake Forest changed their names in the 1910s.Depot Avenue --> McKinley AvenueHazel Avenue --> Church StreetLinden Avenue --> College RoadPoplar Avenue --> Rosemary RoadMapl...

Spellman-Johnson Family

The story of the Spellman-Johnson family begins in the 1800s with Patrick Joseph Spellman. He was born in 1845 in Ontario, the first stopping place on this side of the Atlantic after his parents emigr...

Preston Family

The Preston family's roots trace back to Edinburgh, Scotland. James and Catherine Preston had seven children – two, Robert and George F., would make their way to Lake Forest in the early 1900s.

Fairlawn and Beyond: Lake Forest's Farwell-Winston Family

In 1838, Henry and Nancy Farwell and their children migrated from Steuben, in western New York, to Ogle County, Illinois, where they established a farm near Mount Morris, southwest of Rockford. 

Lanners-Rose Family

Michael Rose was born in Clarke’s Beach, Newfoundland, where the fishing industry dominated the landscape. He married Mary Josephine Walsh, who hailed from one town over, North River, in 1887, and wit...

Paving the Way in Lake Forest: The Kelley Family

The Kelley family's presence in Lake Forest owes much to the livestock concerns of James Anderson and George Findlay. In 1878, they imported the first lot of Aberdeen angus cattle to the U.S. Accompan...

Pratt-Strenger Family

Francis Nelson Pratt worked his way west from New York on the Erie Canal, arriving here in 1857 even before the town was founded. He took part in the construction of Lake Forest’s first bridges, its f...

Baldwin Family: Codfish Town and Beyond

In 1891, Patrick and Mary Baldwin left their home in Newfoundland, near St. John’s, and made their way here. They were among a wave of immigrants to Lake Forest from Newfoundland in the 1880s and 1890...

Chandler-Tuttle-Farwell Family

The roots of the Farwell family in Lake Forest are deep, and the family tree has many branches. Tracing the Farwells back in Illinois, the logical beginning of the story is with Henry and Nancy Farwel...

Building Faith: 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...

The Matthews Enterprise: Black-Owned Businesses in Early Lake Forest

Locations: Western Avenue across from the train station and 635 East Illinois Road

According to his daughter Harriet, in 1886 Julian Matthews arrived in Lake Forest “in a boxcar full of fine Virginia horseflesh.” Matthews was born enslaved in Virginia in 1863. By the 1880s, he was l...

Smith Hayes and Political Influence

Location: Illinois Road between Oakwood and Bank Lane

Smith Hayes was born enslaved in Mississippi in 1845. He joined the Union Army in 1864 at Vicksburg, serving in the 72nd Illinois Infantry, Company C as a Private, Undercook. After the Civil War he ma...

Lake Forest Legacy: Slaughter-Whittingham Family

By Michelle Bentley and Nik-ki Whittingham

Minnie was born August 21, 1886, to the late Joseph and Lucy Waters.  She was preceded in death by her brothers, Ammon, Bradford, Charlie, Wilford, George, and one sister, Ellen.  She depart...

Building Lake Forest

Deeply Rooted and Rising High: African American Experiences in Lake Forest

Since the 1980 census, the population of Lake Forest residents identifying as African American has hovered around 1%. These numbers, along with conventional wisdom equating Lake Forest with white subu...

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...

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...

Samuel Dent

Samuel Dent was born enslaved around 1835 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. A butler in home of Edmond Elliot, he escaped in April 1862 when the 19th Illinois Infantry advanced on Decatur and Tuscumbia. Dent app...

Lake Forest map, 1861

Market Square: Heralding a New Era in Urban Planning

At its beginnings, Market Square broke new ground. In 1916, as the nation’s first artfully designed shopping center, it linked pedestrian, automobile, and train, and heralded a new era in urban planni...

Lake Forest Legacy: Henry McIntosh

Henry McIntosh was born enslaved on a Kentucky plantation in 1843. After the Civil War broke out, he was forced into wrangling horses for the Confederate Army. McIntosh found a chance to escape, cross...

Serving Our Country: James Hardinge

James Hardinge was born on June 6th, 1836, in the parish of Knockcommon, County Meath, Ireland. At a young age, he emigrated to the United States, where he and his family settled in Libertyville, Illi...

Pioneering West Lake Forest: Michael and Roseanna Yore

Irish immigrant Michael Yore, his wife Roseanna, and their 12 children played an important role in shaping west Lake Forest. The Yores came to the U.S. in 1827. First settling in Salina (Syracuse), Ne...