John and Catherine Cloes and their six year old son Henry were the earliest European settlers to lay claim to land in what is now Lake Bluff. They arrived in 1836 from Germany and claimed over 107 acres of land spanning from the lake to the Green Bay Trail.
Cloes, a blacksmith, locksmith and gunsmith by trade, opened a blacksmith shop on the east side of the Green Bay Trail and built a cabin overlooking Lake Michigan near East Blodgett Avenue. John and Catherine had seven children and farmed about 10 acres of their land.
In 1850, John Cloes was lured to California by the Gold Rush and died in Sacramento soon after arriving there. Left alone to care for her large family (eight children), Catherine Cloes joined with another early settler, Henry Ostrander, and operated the Cloes brickyard on her property. It became a successful local business lasting until the late 1890s.