The story of the Frings Building, 400-402 Court St.

By Jared L. Olar

Local History Program Coordinator

The historic structure at the southeast corner of Court and Fourth streets in Pekin’s old town – at 400-402 Court St. – is known as the Frings Building, a name that derives from Charles V. Frings (1906-1977), a notable businessman in Pekin’s old town during the 20th century. The Frings Building itself is much older than its namesake, however, having been erected in the mid-1880s.

The Frings Building storefront at 400-402 Court St. is shown in this Aug. 2022 Google Street View image. For about 35 years, the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce’s offices have been located at 402 Court St., formerly the location of the Princess confectionary.

The 1861 Root’s City Directory of Pekin shows that the brothers John Herget and George Herget then had their J. & G. Herget dry goods store at the southeast corner of Court and Fourth. Ten years later, though, the 1871 Sellers & Bates city directory shows that J. & G. Herget had moved catty-corner to the northwest corner of Court and Fourth. In its place, we find a boarding house and saloon called the Arbeiters Heimath (German for “Workers’ Home”), run by another pair of German immigrants named Louis Zuckweiler and Henry Hoerr (1845-1901).

At the center of this detail from an 1877 hand-drawn aerial map of Pekin is Henry Hoerr’s Arbeiters Heimath (Workers’ Home), a German immigrants’ boarding house at what was then numbered 502-504 Court St., today 400-402 Court. Also at 504 Court at this time was William Lauterbach’s. barbershop. The Arbeiters Heimath structure was replaced in 1885-1887 by the present structure, today known as the Frings Building.

Hoerr again appears a sole proprietor of the Arbeiters Heimath in the 1876 Pekin city directory, at which time the building was numbered 502-504 Court St. Also listed at 504 Court St. (today’s 402 Court) that year was the barbershop of William Lauterbach (1845-1926). The Arbeiters Heimath building can be seen on an 1877 aerial-view map of Pekin.

By the mid-1880s, however, that building was replaced by the current structure, as indicated by the 1885 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Pekin and the 1887 Pekin city directory. What is today known as the Frings Building was built during those years and was originally known as the Keller Building, after its first owner Mrs. Margaret Keller. The first occupants were the German-American National Bank at 400 Court St., which was founded 10 Aug. 1887, and the Albertsen & Koch furniture store at 402 Court St., which opened at that address just nine days earlier. (The 1876 city directory mentions Albertsen & Koch, but unhelpfully fails to provide the business’ address that year!)

The original facade of the German-American National Bank at the southeast corner of Court and Fourth streets, today 400 Court St. in the Frings Buildings. The bank opened its doors on 10 Aug. 1887.

The 1887-88 Bates City Directory of Pekin featured this full page advertisement for the newly opened German-American National Bank. Because a very large part of Pekin’s population (if not the majority) then spoke German as their mother tongue, the bank catered especially to German immigrants and their families — so the advertisement was run in both English and German.

An advertisement for the Albertsen & Koch furniture store from the 1887 Pekin city directory, noting that the business was then preparing to move to 504 Court St. (today known as 402 Court St.)

At the time of the May 1885 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Pekin, the building at the southeast corner of Fourth and Court streets that would house the German American National Bank and Albertsen & Koch Furniture was then under construction. The bank would open in 1887 in the western half of the new building and the furniture store in the eastern half.

Both the bank and the furniture store quickly became prominent landmarks of Pekin’s community life, with the German-American National Bank later becoming First National Bank and Trust Company of Pekin (and later AMCORE Bank). Albertsen & Koch, owned and operated by Albert H. Albertsen (1856-1928) and Henry Louis Koch (1845-1935), was for a time Pekin’s most successful furniture store. Albertsen & Koch continued to operate from the 402 Court St. storefront until about the turn of last century, last being listed at that address in the 1898 city directory. After that, the furniture store moved to 424-428 Court St. German-American National Bank remained at its original address until 1916, when it relocated to 418 Court St. – so the bank and the furniture store were next-door neighbors again.

An advertisement for Albertsen & Koch furniture store from the 1893 Pekin city directory.

The Jan. 1892 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Pekin shows the German American National Bank at 400 Court St., in the western half of the new building. In the eastern half of the building was the popular Albertsen & Koch Furniture Store. Both the bank and Albertsen’s later moved further up the 400 block of Court Street.

The German-American National Bank at 400 Court St. and the Albertsen & Koch furniture store at 402 Court St. are shown in this detail from the March 1898 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Pekin.

The detail from the Dec. 1903 Sanborn map of Pekin shows the location of the German-American National Bank at 400 Court St. and the Mandel & Bower variety store known as The Fair at 402 Court St.

The Dec. 1909 Sanborn map of Pekin was the last Sanborn map to show the German American National Bank at its old location of 400 Court St. The general store shown at 402 Court in this map was Max Bower’s “The Fair.”

In this 1912 view of Fourth Street looking south from Court Street, the German-American National Bank at 400 Court St. can be seen.

The German-American National Bank at 400 Court St. and Max Bower’s store “The Fair” at 402 Court St. are seen in this vintage 1912 photograph of the 400 block of Court St.

In the Oct. 1916 Sanborn map of Pekin, the German American National Bank is shown in its new building at 416-418 Court St. The bank had just moved there that year, leaving its old location vacant. Two years later, the bank dropped the “German” from its name due to hatred of Germans and Germany that had been stoked by World War I political propaganda. Max Bower’s “The Fair” was still at 402 Court St., though.

After the bank’s move, we next find in the 1922 city directory that Louis Wieburg’s auto accessories store had located at 400 Court St. Meanwhile, after the departure of Albersten & Koch for its new home further up the block, Louis Mandel and Max Bower opened a store they called “The Fair” at 402 Court St. Mandel & Bower’s The Fair first appears at that address in the 1904 Pekin city directory. By the 1909 directory, Bower was listed alone as The Fair’s proprietor. Max Bower’s store continues to appear up to the 1914 directory, but by the time of the 1922 Pekin city directory Bower’s The Fair had been succeeded at 402 Court St. by one of the best known downtown businesses of Pekin’s days of old: The Princess!

Storefront of the Princess confectionary at 402 Court St., which was a popular teen hang-out in Pekin’s days of old. This is now the location of the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce’s offices.

The final Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Pekin in Sept. 1925 shows the American National Bank in its heyday. Its former location at 400 Court St. had become the home of Hackler Bros. drug store, while 402 Court St. was the home of the Princess confectionary.

A photograph of the Princess confectionary from the 1940s.

Another 1940s view of the Princess from the same parade.

The 1974 Pekin Sesquicentennial volume, page 41-42, offers the following five-paragraph history of the Princess confectionary:

“A brief history of ‘The Princess’ – the student hang-out from 1919 to 1950, might best serve to recreate the spirit of the downtown section in which these early stores were located. The Princess was a candy kitchen at 402 Court Street founded and operated by the Beres brothers: Chris (1893-1950), Pete (1896-1968), and Harry (1898-1974) (known as ‘John’ to his student customers). They had migrated to Pekin from Kolinas, Greece.

“It used to be standing-room-only in the Princess on nights of high school football and basketball games. When the 18 booths and fountain area were filled, the door would be locked. Latecomers stood in line outside, entering only as others left. The old, three-digit phone number of the Princess (183) was the most-used in town as parents, awaiting overdue children, would call to summon them home.

“Holidays at the Princess were a Pekin tradition. At Christmas the specialty was candy canes and ribbons, while the Easter feature was chocolate eggs (including a massive 30-pounder). Local schools would bring classes down to observe the candy-making process. (Pete was the resident expert.)

“Other specialties popular with generations of Pekinites were the caramel apples and the ‘pop-eye’ ice cream cups. Pete brought the taffy apple recipe back from a trip to Washington, D.C. in 1920. The Princess introduced it to Pekin (perhaps to the state of Illinois), and it soon became as much of an autumn tradition as football. ‘Pop-eyes,’ introduced in the 1930s, were half-pint ice cream cups sold for 5 cents. They became so popular that the Princess entered into a million-cup contract with a national cup manufacturer.

“In 1927, the Princess added to its popularity by installing a juke box. But that symbol of progress came with an era of mass production and huge confection companies with signaled the end of the Princess and many of her counterparts. The old marble fountain and candy cases disappeared – taking with them another of the personal touches that helped fashion the character of the old home town.”

At the end of the 1940s, the Princess was acquired by Darrell D. McComas (1917-1963) and Jennie B. Glassford (1901-1966), who are listed as proprietors in the 1950 and 1952 city directories. By the time of the 1955 directory, though, the Princess had been acquired by Charles R. “Chuck” Zehren (1920-2009), who changed the store from a candy kitchen to a coffee shop restaurant. But with the close of the 1950s came the end of the Princess.

During the years of The Princess’ reign at 402 Court St., the storefront at 400 Court St. saw a brief succession of businesses. Wieburg’s auto accessories store didn’t last long there, because in the 1924 directory we find Hackler Bros. drug store there – the Hackler brothers being John Byron Hackler (1898-1991) and George Roscoe Hackler (1892-1956). Hackler Bros. operated from that corner until the mid-1930s, when the drug store moved directly across street to 401-403 Court St. (Another Hackler Bros. store was also briefly listed in the Farmers National Bank building at 335 Court St. in the 1930 directory.)

After Hackler Bros. moved, the 1937 Pekin city directory shows 400 Court St. to have been vacant. In the 1939 directory, we find Jacob P. Martin as proprietor of Yvette’s women’s wear, which did not last long. The 1943 directory again shows 400 Court St. as vacant.

Then in the 1946 city directory, we find Raulston Harvey “R. H.” More (1888-1948) as manager of the Firestone Store at 400 Court St. More had come from Pennsylvania to Pekin in 1945. After a brief stint at the Firestone Store, More decided to open a variety store at 400 Court St. that he named, quite simply, More’s Store. Following his death, his children R. H. More Jr. (1913-2000), known by his nickname “Bud,” and Ruth More, along with his widow Lillian, continued to operate More’s Store. About the mid-1950s they even briefly ran a southside branch at 900 Derby St. known as More’s South Side Store.

R. H. “Bud” More Jr. (1913-2000)

Bud More became one of the most prominent and influential pillars of Pekin’s community life, and served as head of the Pekin Chamber of Commerce for nine years. He continued to operate More’s Store until the end of the 1960s, when he retired and closed his shop to become publisher of the Pekin Daily Times. More held the post of Times publisher until his retirement in 1980. The R. H. More Community Room at the Miller Senior Center is named in his honor.

Back-tracking to the closing of the Princess, with the departure of the Princess we next find the Celestial Loan Co. at 402 Court St., operated by Steve P. Budisalich, president and manager, Charles V. “C. V.” Frings, vice-president, and Mrs. Marcella Ruth (Bishop) Aulinskis (1918-2008), secretary. By the mid-1960s the firm’s name was changed slightly to Celestial Credit Plan Inc. By the time of the 1974 city directory, we find that Helen M. Budisalich had replaced Aulinskis as secretary and vice-president.

An advertisement for Celestial Loan Co. from the 1961 Pekin city directory.

Charles V. Frings (1906-1977), from whom the Frings Building derives its name.

Celestial Credit Plan continued at that address until the mid-1980s, when it was succeeded there by Harry D. Willmert’s Personal Finance Co. Inc. – but by the 1988 city directory 402 Court St. was vacant, and remained so until 1990, when the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce moved into the former premises of the Princess – right next door to the storefront where one of the Chamber’s past leaders had had his store. The Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce’s offices are still located at 402 Court St. to this day.

After More’s Store closed at 400 Court St., that storefront remained vacant until the latter 1970s. In the 1977 city directory, we find Jerry Davis’ Comfort Corner, which was followed in 1978 by Pekin Lighting Inc., operated by Robert L. Westrope, president, Richard W. Baker, vice-president, and Faye E. Westrope, secretary. That business too did not last long, being succeeded by the time of the 1980 directory by Neu Optical Co., Frank G. Taylor, optometrist., which by 1988 had become Weisser Optical Co. (later Weisser American Vision Centers), Henry C. Paweski, optometrist. Weisser closed in the mid-1990s, and 400 Court St. remained vacant until the turn of the millennium.

In the 2000 and 2001 Pekin city directories, we find White Buffalo arts-and-crafts supplies at 400 Court  St. Then in the 2002 directory we find Joe Parkin’s White Buffalo jewelers alongside the B’Ribboned Etc. gift shop, which continued at 400 Court until 2006 when the city directory has no listing for 400 Court at all. From the 2011 to the 2019 directories, Alcohol & Drug Professionals was listed at 400 Court St., but that storefront has remained vacant since then, with the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce and the Frings Building LLC offices now the lone occupants of the historic and storied Frings Building.

This 2002 photograph from the Tazewell County Assessor’s website shows the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce at 402 Court and B’Ribboned Etc. at 400 Court.

This 2013 photograph from the Tazewell County Assessor’s website shows the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce at 402 Court and Alcohol & Drug Professionals at 400 Court.

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Light and shadow: A review of Pekin’s African-American history and historiography

By Jared L. Olar

Local History Program Coordinator

As Pekin’s Bicentennial Year continues and we now find ourselves in Black History Month, it is fitting that we turn our attention now to Pekin’s African-American history. Compared to most other areas of our city’s history, this is an aspect of Pekin’s history that has been little researched and whose stories have been little told (which is why I have made it a point over the past five years or so to devote time to researching and writing about Pekin’s Black History here at “From the History Room”).

In fact, up till now the most extensive account of Pekin’s African-American history in the standard published works on Pekin’s history is that found in the 1974 Pekin Sesquicentennial volume. While the Sesquicentennial’s account is far from uninformative, the very nature of a celebratory commemorative historical volume dictates that its treatment of its topics will be more in the nature of a review or survey – and one that will tend to downplay or overlook aspects of history that are unpleasant, lamentable, scandalous, or matters of controversy or contention. Yet I also find it a regrettable omission that the Sesquicentennial’s author did not tell the story of Pekin’s Christian ministers, Rev. Lewis Andrew of First United Presbyterian Church and Rev. Larry Conrad of First Methodist Church, who with their Marquette Heights colleague Rev. David B. Jones answered the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to clergy to come to Alabama in March 1965 in the struggle for civil rights for America’s blacks, as was reported in the Pekin Daily Times back then. However, the Sesquicentennial author did make sure to tell (on page 180) of Sen. Everett M. Dirksen’s crucial role in getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed.

On 20 March 1965, in the midst of the 1960s struggle for African-American civil rights, the front page of the Pekin Daily Times brought the news that two Pekin clergymen and one Marquette Heights clergyman had answered Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. call for Christian ministers to come to Selma, Alabama, to march for voting rights for African-Americans. The story of these three ministers will be told in full next week at “From the History Room.”

Sen. Everett M. Dirksen of Pekin visits the Lincoln Memorial.

In this article, I do not hesitate to discuss some of these difficult or unpleasant matters, for I am of the opinion that Pekin’s story should be honestly told, including the brighter and delightful aspects as well as the darker and unpleasant episodes – if for no other reason than to illustrate just how very far Pekin has come from its darker days and how many positive changes have taken place since then.

Nance Legins-Costley

One of the strengths of the Sesquicentennial’s treatment of Pekin’s African-American history is its account of Nance Legins-Costley (1813-1892), whose story has been spotlighted many times in recent years and who, along with her son Pvt. William Henry Costley of the 29th U.S. Colored Infantry, is now rightly honored with historical markers and a downtown Pekin park named and dedicated in her honor. Nance Legins-Costley is one of Pekin’s most notable and historically significant pioneer settlers, and she was also Pekin’s first known black resident. Pekin’s earliest historical records show that Nance and her family were loved and honored by their community.

But prior to 1974, no standard published work on Pekin’s history had ever tried to tell her story – especially the story of the important court case that secured freedom for herself and her children. The Sesquicentennial tells Nance’s story on pages 5-6 and gives a very informative account of the 1838-39 Cromwell v. Bailey and 1841 Bailey v. Cromwell cases.

Unfortunately our knowledge of Nance and her family in the 1970s was incomplete, so the Sesquicentennial’s writer could not provide any information on Nance’s family or Nance’s final years and death in Peoria and burial in Moffatt Cemetery. It was only in 2019 that Nance’s date of death and place of burial were discovered by Debra Clendenen of Pekin and announced for the first time anywhere here at “From the History Room.” Even so, the Sesquicentennial’s account was a big step forward for Pekin’s African-American historiography, and helped give later researchers such as Carl Adams a place from which to start.

Nance Legins-Costley’s historical marker at Legins-Costley Park in downtown Pekin.

Lloyd J. Oliver’s marriage

After the story of Nance Legins-Costley, past Pekin historical works have often retold the story of the marriage of Lloyd J. Oliver of Pekin, an African-American hero of the Spanish-American War. The Sesquicentennial volume also retells this story on pages 154 and 175, though it repeats a mistake regarding Oliver’s Christian name, and the maiden name of his wife Cora, that dates back to Ben C. Allensworth’s 1905 “History of Tazewell County.” Allensworth misread Oliver’s first name as “Howard” instead of “Lloyd,” and misread his wife’s name as Cora “Hoy” instead of “Foy.” Despite that confusion of names, the marriage of Lloyd Oliver and Cora Foy is one of the best remembered events of Pekin’s African-American history, because the organizers of the 1902 Pekin Street Fair chose to honor Lloyd Oliver’s service to his country by making the marriage of this African-American war hero from Pekin a central event of the Street Fair, and thousands of people crowded downtown Pekin to witness the wedding and celebrate their union.

This photograph of African-American Spanish-American War soldiers was originally printed with the caption, “Some of our brave colored Boys who helped to free Cuba.” Lloyd J. Oliver of Pekin served in the Regular Army during the war, his regiment suffering great casualties in the capture of San Juan Hill. PHOTO COURTESY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The Ku Klux Klan in Pekin

The 1974 Sesquicentennial does not shy away from a discussion of the darkest and most shameful episode in Pekin’s history, when our city was home to the Ku Klux Klan’s Illinois regional headquarters. On page 83, the Sesquicentennial volume tells of the Klan’s control of the Pekin Daily Times in the early 1920s, reducing the city’s primary newspaper to a mouthpiece of racist, nativist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Catholic bigotry. According to the Sesquicentennial volume, the years when the Pekin Daily Times was owned and operated by three leading Klansmen were also years of careless mismanagement of the newspaper, for although the newspaper had produced bound volumes of its pre-1914 issues, “apparently those volumes disappeared during the Klan years.” As popular as the KKK in Pekin was in certain circles back then, there was also strong opposition and disgust, as indicated by the fact that the Pekin Daily Times then alienated so many of its subscribers that it almost went under.

Another reference to the KKK is found on page 106, in the tragic story of the deadly January 1924 Corn Products explosion. Describing the community’s rescue and relief efforts, the volume says, “Allegedly, the Pekin Ku Klux Klan was also on hand. Thirty-six of its members divided into three shifts to aid in the relief, providing food for the Salvation Army tent; trucks and drivers for transporting both men and materials; and aid to bereaved families in the form of food, fuel, and clothing.”

There was no “allegedly” about it – the Pekin Klan, which had dubbed itself “The All-American Club” – was then an established presence like the men’s clubs and community service groups that were popular at the time, and their members were also affected by the tragedy like everyone else in Pekin. The KKK was also known for ostentatious displays of public charity. The Sesquicentennial on page 109 also mentions that when fire destroyed the Hummer Saddlery on 1 Nov. 1924, the Pekin Klan “offered assistance, including the use of the ‘Klavern’ on First Street (the old Pekin Roller Mills Building).”

The Sesquicentennial on page 172 devotes two rather oddly-worded paragraphs to the subject of the KKK in Pekin, as follows:

“It would be misleading to state that the Ku Klux Klan did not exist in Pekin; in fact, it is fairly certain that Pekin was the headquarters for a Klan — to be precise, organization number 31 of the Realm of the Invisible Empire, whose Grand Titan, in 1924, was recorded as one O. W. Friedrich. Further, the Klan, for a time at least, had their Klavern located at the Old Pekin Roller Mills Plant. The group owned the Pekin Daily Times in the early ‘20’s, and its meetings, policies, and plans were front page news, and its ‘good works’ much praised.

“In all fairness, though, it should be pointed out that the Klan was one of the leading social organizations of the day, and many people belonged in order to participate in the group’s activities, much as one might today belong to some fraternal organization. There seems to have been a distinct inner circle, relatively small in number, and a larger, more social outer circle Much more could be said, but it would serve no real use in this type of publication.”

The choice of words – “It would be misleading,” “In all fairness” – bespeak the writer’s understandable discomfort and abashedness, even shame, regarding this aspect of Pekin’s history. Not only would it be “misleading” to state the KKK wasn’t in Pekin, it would be flat out false. And the apologetic paragraph, “In all fairness . . .,” tends to excuse the KKK’s members for the racism (a word that never appears in the Sesquicentennial) that was so prevalent in America in that era, and that was intrinsic to the Klan’s central aims. This account also must be faulted for failing to acknowledge the Pekin Klan’s hateful intimidation of blacks, Jews, and recently-arrived ethnic families. A more forthright overview of Pekin’s Klan years can be found on pages 21-22 of the late Robert B. Monge’s “WW2 Memories of Love & War: June 1937-June 1946,” which says:

“The decade of the twenties and early thirties brought the KU KLUX KLAN to Pekin. Their ceremonial headquarters were on the second floor of the Pekin Daily Times building located at the southeast corner of Fourth and Elizabeth Streets. The Klan owned and published the paper during 1923, 1924 and 1925, praised its ‘good works’ and gave front page coverage of its meetings, policies and plans.

“For a time it was district headquarters for all the Klan chapters in Illinois. It was a terribly low period for the immigrants who lived here and they were the main target of the KLAN. They were devastated by the Klan’s acts of intimidation. Huge crosses were burned on the land known as Hillcrest Gardens (the present site of Pekin Insurance Company) to intimidate the immigrants. Many of these families huddled in fear in their homes nearby; however, the immigrant men were ready with shotguns just in case they were threatened physically.”

An image from a darker time, this illustration appeared in a Pekin Daily Times advertisement for a major Ku Klux Klan gathering in Pekin — the “Klantauqua” — that took place in late August 1924.

The presence – and absence – of African-Americans in Pekin

Finally, the Sesquicentennial on pages 175-176 devotes eight full paragraphs to Pekin’s African-Americans, and attempts to address the troubling absence of black people from Pekin for most of the 20th century. Much of this account is quite interesting and generally informative, and it covers much of the same ground that this weblog’s 2020 “From the Local History Room” series on Pekin’s African-Americans covered, only in less detail than we have been able to provide here.

The Sesquicentennial account is notably sensitive about Pekin’s reputation and does not acknowledge the role that racist attitudes and the KKK’s presence had, instead blaming the past absence of blacks here on economics and education (which were indeed reasons, albeit certainly not the only reasons). Understandably, the Sesquicentennial volume, written as part of a celebration of Pekin, would not be the appropriate publication to grapple with such issues. Here, then, is the Sesquicentennial’s account, in which he names several individuals and families who have become very well known to me over the past few years):

“But one ethnic element important in earlier generations has slowly become ‘invisible.’ Blacks came to this town by at least 1830 in the person of Nancy, the employee (sic – indentured servant) of the Cromwells discussed in the Overview, and many are mentioned throughout the long period ending after World War I. They had difficulties here, but not the kind of troubles the myth-makers would have us believe.

“The principle problem was the necessity of learning the German language—a barrier to many whites during the same period. Another drawback was the Blacks’ lack of skills, an inevitable problem in an era in which most of them remained uneducated. Nevertheless, they found jobs and homes for their families in the frontier community. According to Bates’ Directory, Nancy apparently lived the remainder of her life in Pekin (a period of about thirty-five [rather, 50] years) after the celebrated Supreme Court appeal argued by A. Lincoln.

“By 1845 the ten-person family of Moses Shipman and the Peter Logan family of four, along with at least six other Blacks, lived in the town. The families of Charles Cramby and John Winslow appear in the records of 1855, as does Benjamin Costly. During the Civil War, no less than ten Blacks from Pekin served in various elements of the Union Army, including Private Thomas Shipman of Company D, 29th United States (Colored) Infantry, who was killed in combat near Hatcher’s Run, Virginia, on March 31, 1865.

“The post-war amendments to the United States Constitution and the new 1870 Constitution of Illinois brought about new openness for the Blacks. Schools and voting were opened to them. The legendary former Sheriff, hero of the Mexican-American War, William A. Tinney (says Chapman in 1879), ‘distinguished himself in his old days by being the first white man in Pekin to lead a Negro to the polls to vote . . .’ Unfortunately, we cannot determine which black resident it was who voted.

“Dozens of others, with both good and poor reputations, lived in Pekin through the years. Anderson Blue, James Lane, and other names appear. ‘James Arnold Washington Lincoln Jackson Gibson’ was the mascot of Company G, 5th Illinois Infantry of the Spanish-American War; and a veteran of that conflict, Howard (sic – Lloyd) Oliver, returned to Pekin in 1902 to marry Miss Cora Hoy (sic – Foy).

“Then there was ‘Rastus’ Gaines. He is fondly remembered by older citizens as the cheerful, businesslike porter of the old Tazewell Hotel. As the Reverend Erastus Gaines, he made his mark as an evangelist in both Pekin and Peoria. Says one who knew him at the turn of this century, ‘He was uneducated, but within his abilities, he could give a good talk and could get his message across  . . . . While we kidded him a lot . . . we liked him a great deal.’

“Sam Day, Al Oliver, the families of McElroy, Houston, and Good are names which can yet be recalled by the elder citizens of present-day Pekin. Walter Lee was for many years the masseur at the Pekin Hospital, and for a time had a private practice in the Arcade Building. Many others have come and gone.

“Why is there now this tear in the ethnic fabric of Pekin? Pure economics. When the depression bore down on everyone in the thirties, many persons lost savings, jobs, housing – everything. Black or white, they had to ‘double up’ with friends or relatives to make ends meet. Even though the language barrier no longer exists, and the myth about Pekin’s attitudes have been proven false, Blacks simply have not returned to again add their contribution to the cultural richness of the city which was among the first to recognize them as partners in the progress of an expanding community.”

William Edward “Rastus” Gaines, porter at the Tazewell Hotel in downtown Pekin, born 3 April 1878 in Washington, Georgia, son of Jesse and Mary (Tate) Gaines, died after 25 April 1942 probably in Baltimore, Maryland. PHOTO COURTESY TAZEWELL COUNTY GENEALOGICAL & HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Any discussion of the African-American experience in Pekin should include not only the stories of Pekin’s black families during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but will have to address Pekin’s reputation as a “Sundown Town,” a community unwelcoming to or hostile to blacks.  As we’ve mentioned here before, Pekin’s reputation predates the arrival of the Klan, but the Klan’s strong presence here certainly terrified Pekin’s small population of blacks. U.S. Census statistics show only four blacks in Pekin in 1900 (there were more than that), in 1910 only eight, in 1920 (just before the KKK arrived) a total of 31, in 1930 only one – and in 1940 not a single black person was left in Pekin, something that would not change until the 1990s.

Unlike other Midwestern communities, Pekin never had any city ordinances dictating that blacks had to be out of town by sundown – “unofficial” social pressure and intimidation were certainly present, though. The widespread story of a “sundown” sign on the Pekin bridge remains one of the unresolved mysteries of Pekin’s past, because no direct evidence has ever been produced that Pekin really had such a sign posted on its bridge, the way other “lily-white” Illinois communities posted anti-black signs at their town or city limits. If there ever was such a sign, it was not authorized by Pekin’s city government, and it was probably long gone by the 1960s if not earlier.

The fact that the story has long been so widespread suggests that it is based on truth, and yet the absence of any photographic evidence also suggests that the story could be only a legend. In my own research, the closest I’ve ever come to evidence for the bridge sign is a 14 Oct. 2010 Pekin Daily Times Letter to the Editor written by Randy Hilst, who said he had found the sign (or “a” sign) in an old house in Pekin that had KKK robes and relics. Hilst wrote, “I had the sign verified as to being old by a lady who lived in Peoria, who used to do appraisals at the Illinois Antique Center in Peoria. She said it was the first she had seen but always believed they did exist. We also talked about the possibility that they may have had to be replaced from time to time, so who knows how many were actually made and how many ‘knock-offs’ were made by local racists at the time.”

Until solid documentation is found that might shed light on the old story of the bridge sign, it can only remain a haunting echo of a past that was vastly different from contemporary Pekin’s increasingly racially diverse community.

Next week, “From the History Room” will again feature an article in keeping with Black History Month, telling the story of the three Pekin-area ministers who joined the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to march for African-American civil rights in Alabama in 1965.

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Helen Hiett Waller of Pekin, intrepid war correspondent

By Jared L. Olar

Local History Specialist

Among the women and men of Pekin who have risen to fortune or fame was Helen Hiett Waller (1931-1961), a talented journalist and war correspondent who is remembered as a cosmopolitan.

Helen Annette Hiett, daughter of Asa Burnett and Estella (Erb) Hiett, came to Pekin with her family about 1925. She excelled as a student and was the valedictorian of the Pekin Community High School Class of 1931. Shown here is her 1931 yearbook photo.

Starting out as a teenage reporter with the Pekin Daily Times, Helen was the valedictorian of Pekin Community High School’s Class of 1931. After graduation she went to Europe and reported on the Spanish Civil War. During World War II she was NBC’s war correspondent, remaining in Paris, France, during Adolf Hitler’s blitzkrieg and having to flee before the advancing Nazi tank columns. Later in the war, she sneaked into Nazi Germany and made it to Berlin.

Sadly, her fearlessness ultimately contributed to her untimely death at age 47, when she succumbed to injuries that she suffered while skiing in the French Alps in the summer of 1961. The Pekin Daily Times devoted a lengthy front-page obituary to her, paying tribute to her remarkable life. In his column, Daily Times publisher F. F. McNaughton observed, “Helen didn’t live out her years; but she lived a dozen lives.”

In 1944, Helen wrote a book about her life and adventures entitled, “No Matter Where.” A copy of her book, which formerly belonged to one of Helen’s high school chums Roberta Lindstrom, recently was donated to the Pekin Public Library’s Local History Room collection by Sue Price, in memory of her mother (who was a friend of Roberta). Interleaved with the book are old, browned clipping of her obituary and of the two columns that McNaughton wrote in her memory. The obituary, dated Wednesday, 23 Aug. 1961, reads as follows:

“Injured In Mountain-Climbing Mishap”

“Helen Hiett Waller, Ex-Pekin Newswoman, Succumbs In France”

“Life ended unexpectedly Tuesday morning in a hospital in the Chamonix Valley of eastern France for a former Pekin woman who had filled her comparatively short lifetime with adventure and achievement made possible only by a rare combination of brains, ability and ambition.

“Helen Hiett Waller, 47, who began her career as a reporter for the Pekin Daily Times while she was still a schoolgirl, and who spent exciting years reporting the Spanish civil war and World War II in Europe, died of a blood clot, following surgery to repair injuries incurred in a mountain-climbing mishap last month.

“Helen had spent the summer with her three children in Switzerland, and her husband, Theodore Waller, had joined them during this vacation. It was while the couple was climbing Mt. Perseverance that Helen was struck by a falling rock and suffering internal injuries.

“Her husband and the children remained with her until doctors assured them that she was recovering satisfactorily, and then returned to their home at Katonah, N.Y., to make preparations for the opening of school.

“Mr. Waller called the hospital Sunday and learned that a third operation had been necessary, but that his wife was getting along well. However, an embolism developed, and she died suddenly Tuesday morning.

“Born at Chenoa, Il., Sept. 23, 1913, she was the daughter of Asa B. and Estella Erb Hiett, who later moved to Pekin, where Helen attended school and was graduated from Pekin high school as valedictorian of the Class of 1931.

“She reported school news while still in the eighth grade, and after she entered high school worked part-time and during the summers for the TIMES.

“Her ‘nose for news’ led her all over town, as well as out into the Times area, and her ‘stick-to-it-iveness’ made her an extremely successful reporter, qualities which stood her in good stead throughout her years as a war correspondent.

“Upon completing high school, she entered the University of Chicago, receiving her degree there in three years instead of the usual four, and earning a grant to study at London University.

“A resident of many countries of Europe from 1934 to 1941, Helen made it a practice to live with families in Germany, Russia, France, Italy and Spain, learning their languages and their ways of life. She also spent some time working in youth camps in both Germany and Russia.

“During her years in Europe, she worked first for the League of Nations, editing a monthly review of international affairs. At the outbreak of World War II, she joined the staff of the National Broadcasting Company as a commentator and war correspondent, reporting from Paris until that city fell to the Germans and after that from Madrid, Spain.

“She spent most of the war years abroad, in the thick of things, where her experiences included flying to front-line trenches and reporting on-the-spot experiences during the air raids on Paris, Bordeaux and other European cities.

“Several times during the war years of the 1940’s, she returned to the United States and made personal speaking appearances in Pekin and Peoria.

“Following the war, she also spent some time in Mexico, where she wrote a book relating her experiences, which she entitled, ‘No Matter Where.’

“In 1945 she joined the New York Herald Tribune Forum as director, touring the world to arrange for hundreds of national leaders from foreign countries to visit the United States to participate in the Forum, which continued for a period of 10 years. Starting in 1946, Helen directed a Herald Tribune forum for high school youth, which brought students from 74 countries to the United States.

“Her marriage to Theodore Waller, who has been engaged in various federal government projects and the United Nations, occurred at Pekin Mar. 28, 1948.”

F. F. McNaughton devoted his “Editor’s Letter” that day to her death:

“So Helen Hiett is dead!

“If Dean, in his fone call, had asked us to guess, Helen is the LAST person we would have named.

“Helen ignored death.

“The last time we saw Helen was last summer when she and her wonderful children stopped at our cottage enroute to the Rocky Mountains where they were to risk their lives climbing; then, if they survived, they planned to shoot some rapids.

“This spring she wrote that they were going to Chamonix to climb this summer.

“It brought memories.

“In late winter of 1937 Ceil and I met Helen at Chamonix in the Alps. We climbed into a teleferique (basket on a cable) and were hauled over space (our first space flight) to the top of a famous mountain.

“Helen was not yet an expert skier. But she strapped on a pair of skis; then for several minutes she watched the experts of the world take off as they prepared for a big ski meet.

“Suddenly Helen took off.

“The last we saw of her, she went over the rim, head over heels. But when we, frightened for her and half frozen, rode the bucket back down, there was Helen.

“Today we think we worry over Berlin. There was a day when Berlin gave us terror. It was the day Hitler swept over France. We sat at our radios and with our own ears heard Hitler shout that history for a thousand years was being made as his panzer divisions swept toward Paris.

“Helen was NBC in Paris.

“She stayed so long that she finally had to flee across pastures. She slept in wheatfields.

“During the war she sneaked back into Germany – clear to Berlin.

“Helen started her newspapering as the Pekin Times high school reporter. Then thru Chicago University in 3 years; and off to Europe where she learned the language wherever she went.

“If I’m correct, she saw Mussolini and his mistress hanging by their heels.

“Helen always thought of herself as a girl; so it was fitting that her greatest work was with the youth of all the world. She ran the New York Herald-Tribune’s ‘Youth Forum’ and did an amazing job of presenting to the world the viewpoint of the youth of the world.

“Wherever she is – whatever height she is climbing – you can be sure Helen has Youth with her.

“Helen didn’t live out her years; but she lived a dozen lives.

“Pekin mourns her.

“And salutes her.”

A clipping from Helen Hiett Waller’s Pekin Daily Times obituary.

McNaughton devoted a second column to her in late November perhaps the following year, in which he featured a photograph of her grave near Mont Blanc, Chamonix, France.

The grave of Helen Hiett Waller near Mont Blanc, Chamonix, France, from a browned Pekin Daily Times clipping.

In that “Editor’s Letter” he wrote:

“You’ll recall we recently got a letter asking for a picture of the grave of Helen Hiett Waller at Chamonix, France. Helen’s sister, Margaret Whiteside, has sent this picture.

“Ceil and I once had ridden the teleferique with Helen to the top, and had watched her take off, dangerously, on skis.

“After she had wed and had 2 sons and a daughter, all under teen age, she still could not resist the urge to climb in the Alps.

“It cost her life, and on Aug. 24, 1961, 4 Alpine guides, as was the custom, carried her to this grave to be buried among others who rated danger above death.

“Helen had lived dangerously. For instance, while covering the war for NBC she fled thru wheat-fields ahead of Hitler’s blitzkrieg across France. (Later she slipped into Berlin during the war.)

“On Helen’s trips home, she never failed to have an SRO crowd when she reported to her home folk in Pekin’s biggest auditorium.

“On this Thanksgiving weekend we give thanks for wonderful memories. High among them are the memories of Helen Hiett Waller.”

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Dedication of the Pekin Carnegie library cornerstone

By Jared Olar

Library Assistant

In recent weeks, we have looked back to the way the groundwork was laid for the construction of Pekin’s Carnegie library. By early 1902, the library board’s building committee had selected Paul O. Moratz as the architect to design the new library building, and Moratz had submitted his plans to the board on March 13, 1902.

This photograph from the 1930s shows Pekin’s old Carnegie Library, which was built to the design of Bloomington architect Paul O. Moratz in 1902-1903. The cornerstone was located to the right of the front steps. One of the two wrought-iron lamps at the entrance steps was saved when the library was demolished in the early 1970s. The lamp stood in the new library’s plaza until 2014, at which time it was restored and refurbished so it could be moved to the remodeled and expanded library’s new Local History Room.

In her 1902 account of the Pekin Public Library’s early history, Miss Mary Gaither told of the next steps in the process:

“In June, the reports of this Committee stated that the contracts had been let, as agreed upon, reserving certain details, and the bid of Mr. J. D. Handbury was, after due deliberation, accepted by said committee.”

In the bidding competition, J. D. Handbury had gone up against Conklin-Hippen-Reuling Co. and E. Zimmer & Co. All three construction firms were based in Pekin. Besides those three Pekin contractors, the building committee had also considered bids from a Peoria contractor and two or three Bloomington contractors.

After the selection of the contractor, the ground at 301 S. Fourth Street was prepared and staked off. Plans were then made for a grand public ceremony and parade in which the Carnegie library’s cornerstone would be dedicated and laid. Within the cornerstone a time capsule would be stored.

The date for the ceremony, which drew a large crowd of Pekin residents both great and small, was set for Tuesday, Aug. 19, 1902. The library board members at the time were Franklin L. Velde, William J. Conzelman, Carl G. Herget, Henry Birkenbusch, Ben P. Schenck, Mrs. W. E. Schenck, Mrs. J. L. Hinners, Miss Emily Weyrich, and (of course) Miss Gaither.

One of them items in the cornerstone time capsule was a telegram received at 9:04 a.m. on Aug. 14, 1902, from John Oglesby, private secretary of Illinois Lieut. Gov. William A. Northcott (1854-1917), expressing Northcott’s regrets that he could not attend the cornerstone laying ceremony.

Shown here is one of the invitations to the ceremonial laying of the Pekin Carnegie Library’s cornerstone and time capsule, which took place following a grand parade on Aug. 19, 1902.

It is likely that Pekin’s own historian William H. Bates (1840-1930) oversaw the selection and preparation of the contents of the time capsule, as he later did in the case of the 1914 Tazewell County Courthouse cornerstone time capsule. Bates’ obituary recalled that “He was at the fore in all public demonstrations” (i.e. celebrations or ceremonies), and it is telling that one of the items in the library’s 1902 cornerstone was the 1883-1884 library card of Bates’ own daughter Ida.

In any event, the contents of the cornerstone chiefly consisted of an assortment of documents and relics pertaining to the library’s early history, the history of the plans and preparations leading up to the construction of Pekin’s Carnegie library, lists of the local governmental officials in office at the time of the laying of the cornerstone, and mementos of the 38 local service clubs that took part in the cornerstone ceremony.

Also placed in the cornerstone time capsule were a number of mementos and artifacts that are not directly related to the library, such as postages stamps, calling cards, an Oct. 1899 Pekin Street Fair brochure, and a Smith Wagon Co. catalog. Also included were five local newspapers, three of them from August 1902 and two of them from February 1896. The reason for including three August 1902 newspapers is obvious – they are issues with dates that are close to the day of the cornerstone laying: the Pekin Daily Post-Tribune of Aug. 18, 1902, the Pekin Daily Times of Aug. 16, 1902, and the Pekin Freie Presse of Aug. 14, 1902. (Pekin formerly had a German language newspaper due to the heavy influx of German immigrants to Pekin in the mid- to late 1800s.)

The two newspapers from February 1896 were the Pekin Daily Tribune and the Pekin Daily Evening Post, both of 13 Feb. 1896. They were chosen for the time capsule because that date was close to the day that the library became a municipal body of Pekin’s city government.

With the library cornerstone laid, construction proceeded apace and the new Pekin Public Library opened its doors to a proud and grateful community on Dec. 10, 1903, with a formal dedication ceremony on Dec. 14, 1903..

When we continue the story of Pekin’s library next week, we’ll turn our attention to some of the Carnegie’s library’s special furnishings – which included a pair of beautiful clocks.

#1899-pekin-street-fair, #ben-p-schenck, #carl-herget, #conklin-hippen-reuling-co, #e-zimmer-and-co, #franklin-velde, #henry-birkenbusch, #ida-bates, #j-d-handbury, #john-oglesby, #lieut-gov-william-a-northcott, #miss-emily-weyrich, #miss-mary-e-gaither, #mrs-j-l-hinners, #mrs-w-e-schenck, #paul-o-moratz, #pekin-daily-evening-post, #pekin-daily-post-tribune, #pekin-daily-times, #pekin-daily-tribune, #pekin-freie-presse, #pekin-public-library, #pekin-public-library-history, #smith-wagon-company, #william-a-northcott, #william-conzelman, #william-h-bates

Alfred W. Rodecker, judge and journalist

This is a reprint of a “From the Local History Room” column that first appeared in June 2015, before the launch of this weblog.

Alfred W. Rodecker, judge and journalist

By Jared Olar
Library Assistant

In the first few years of the 20th century, Ben C. Allensworth, a past editor of the Pekin Daily Times, undertook to update Charles C. Chapman’s 1879 Tazewell County history. Allensworth was assisted in that task by his friend and colleague Alfred Wilson Rodecker.

Rodecker, who generally was called Judge Rodecker, was owner and editor of the Pekin Daily Times. Relying on his own knowledge and experience, he wrote the historical account of the Tazewell County Bar for the 1905 “History of Tazewell County.” Rodecker also wrote Allensworth’s biography for the same volume, and as a newspaper owner and a former judge, naturally Rodecker’s own biography also was included in the updated county history.

Following are excerpts from that biography:

“Alfred W. Rodecker, Pekin, is the son of David Rodecker, who was born in Bellefontaine, Logan County, Ohio, in 1812, and of Jane (Wilson) Rodecker, born in Urbana, Champaign County, Ohio, in 1817. The parents were married in 1835, and moved to Peoria, lll., in 1838. . . . Failing health compelled [David Rodecker] to sell his business in that city, and he afterward located in Dillon, Tazewell County, where he conducted a general store. His death occurred in 1859, five children surviving him, four of whom are still living.

“Our subject was born in Peoria, May 15, 1844. For six years he attended the Hinman School, in that place . . . and afterward the country school in Dillon. On the 2nd day of April, 1862, he located at Pekin, went to work in the old ‘Register’ newspaper office, and has resided in that city ever since. In 1865 he entered Eureka College and, after completing his course, passed a year in teaching school and reading law. He then entered the law office of A. B. Sawyer, formerly of Pekin, and now of Salt Lake City.

“Being admitted to the bar, in 1869, Judge Rodecker formed a copartnership with M. N. Bassett, now Probate Judge in Peoria. This copartnership was dissolved at the end of three years, and he continued to practice alone until 1877, when he was elected County Judge of Tazewell County. . . . and served as Judge until 1886. This is the only office which he has ever held, except that of School Inspector in the City of Pekin, to which position he was elected to fill a vacancy in 1871. He was twice re-elected, serving in that capacity for a period of seven years. During this official term as School Inspector, he delivered an address to the first graduating class of the Pekin High School.

“On June 22, 1871, Judge Rodecker was married to Ida F. Fenner, in Tremont, Ill. Their son Thaddeus, business manager for the Times Publishing Company, is their only child.

“In 1886, Judge Rodecker became one of the proprietors of the Times Publishing Company, that plant having been purchased from J. B. Irwin. Since January 1, 1894, he has been actively connected with the publication of the ‘Daily and Weekly Times,’ two-thirds of the ownership being vested in him, and the other one-third in Dr. F. Shurtleff. [Note: Shurtleff’s wife was Rodecker’s half-sister Mary Rodecker.] The editorial management of the paper is in Judge Rodecker’s charge. The Judge is a trenchant writer. He does not affect especially literary finish, but has a terse way of stating all the facts involved in the treatment of a given topic.

“Accompanied by his wife, our subject has traveled extensively throughout the Southern States, having for a number of years made an annual trip through that section during the winter season. His published letters descriptive of conditions there — social, commercial, political, and otherwise — are highly appreciated by all those admirers of graphic writing whose pleasure it has been to read them.”

This detail from the 1925 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Pekin shows several homes near the intersection of Washington and South Fourth streets. The home designated 345 S. Fourth St. was the residence of Judge A. W. Rodecker (though in his lifetime the house number was 343). The lot is now occupied by The Golden Arms apartment building.

Rodecker’s biographical sketch concludes with the following laudatory appraisal of his life and character:

“The career of A. W. Rodecker furnishes an illustration of the possibilities of American citizenship. His early manhood was one of unremittent toil in the face of obstacles which, for many men, would have lost the battle of life. The incentive of a laudable ambition to deserve an honorable place among his fellow men; untiring industry and persistence in every endeavor, and, above all, a worthy, upright purpose in every undertaking, have been the elements of character contributing to the success he has achieved in life. In his personal relations, his loyalty to his friends has never been questioned. While he forgives a wrong, it must not be said of him that he has as yet reached such sublime heights as to forget the wrongdoer. With all those manly characteristics which stand for individual worth he is richly endowed, and be well deserves the honored place he holds in the hearts of those who know him best.”

After the publication of the updated Tazewell County history, Rodecker survived for another five years, dying Oct. 4, 1910. His widow Ida lived for another four decades, dying in Pekin at the age of 89 on Jan. 23, 1941. Their only child Thaddeus (who himself named one of his sons Alfred Wilson Rodecker) died of a sudden heart attack on May 1, 1933, and his obituary, written by his co-workers at the Daily Times and expressing shock and grief, was printed on the front page of that day’s paper.

Thaddeus’ obituary described his parents as “builders of the Times building and highly respected citizens.” (That refers to the old Times building at 405 Court Street, before the newspaper moved to the Zerwekh building at 30 S. Fourth St.) Thaddeus and his parents are buried in Lakeside Cemetery in Pekin.

The former location of Judge Rodecker’s home as it appears in a recent Google Maps satellite view.

#a-w-sawyer, #alfred-w-rodecker, #alfred-wilson-rodecker, #ben-c-allensworth, #david-rodecker, #dr-f-shurtleff, #golden-arms-apartments, #ida-f-fenner, #j-b-irwin, #jane-wilson-rodecker, #judge-rodecker, #mary-rodecker, #pekin-daily-times, #preblog-columns, #thaddeus-rodecker

Actress Susan Dey’s story began in Pekin

By Jared Olar
Library Assistant

In past decades, it was the practice for a community’s newspapers to collect and regularly publish birth announcements. Before changes in medical privacy laws, lists of daily births would be provided to newspapers by hospitals or public health departments. These announcements would often be printed on a specific page set aside for community or “society” news, but depending on the period of time and the place when the baby was born, a newspaper might run a birth announcement almost anywhere – even on the front page.

One such announcement provides us with the topic of this week’s “From the History Room” column. On Dec. 10, 1952, at the bottom of the rightmost column on the front page, the Pekin Daily Times published the following birth announcement, giving it the unusual and humorous headline, “Another Dey Today” —

“A baby girl, weighing six pounds, four ounces was born this morning in Pekin Public hospital to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Dey, 701 S. Sixth street. The baby is the second daughter of the couple. The father is the city editor of the TIMES, having joined the editorial staff about nine months ago. ‘No name yet,’ says Bob.”

The baby girl was given the name of Susan Hallock Dey. She is one of several entertainment celebrities whose stories began in Pekin.

Susan Dey’s first acting role was as Laurie Partridge in The Partridge Family (1970-1974). Dey, shown in this 1970 public domain ABC publicity photo, was born in Pekin in 1952, but her family moved to New York when she was very young.

The birth of actress Susan Dey was announced at the bottom of column eight on the front page of the Dec. 10, 1952 Pekin Daily Times.

Her father, Robert Smith Dey (1925-2016), was a native of New York State and son of an immigrant from Switzerland. With the help of the G.I. Bill, Robert graduated from the New York University School of Journalism and began a three-decade journalism career as a reporter in his home state, later taking a position at a paper in Pennsylvania before joining the staff of the Pekin Daily Times in March 1952. (The 1952 Polk City Directory of Pekin lists Robert as a newspaper reporter living at 701 S. Sixth St.) Her mother, Ruth Pyle (Doremus) Dey (1925-1961), was an Indiana native and a trained nurse. After Susan’s birth, Robert and Ruth had two more children.

The Deys did not remain in Pekin – about a year or two after the birth of their daughter Susan, Robert was hired as a city editor for the Gannett Company in Westchester, New York. He later became the editor of the Standard-Star in New Rochelle, New York. His daughter Susan was only eight years old when his wife Ruth died. Robert later married Gail Shellenberger (1920-2008), who had been born in Ohio.

In 1968, when Susan was 15, her stepmother Gail sent Susan’s photo to a New York modeling agency. Susan Dey did not work as a model very long, for in 1970, at the age of 17, she was hired to play the role of Laurie Partridge in the television series The Partridge Family – one of her best-remembered roles, even 46 years after the show was cancelled at the end of its fourth season. Her role of Laurie Partridge launched a very successful career both in television and in movies, with her greatest success due to her award-winning role of Grace Van Owen on the 1980s television drama L.A. Law.

Susan Dey has been retired from acting since 2004. The house at the corner of Sixth and McLean streets in Pekin, where she lived as a baby and toddler, is still there.

The Dey family lived at this home in Pekin when actress Susan Dey was born at Pekin Hospital in Dec. 1952.

#gail-shellenberger-dey, #grace-van-owen, #l-a-law, #laurie-partridge, #pekin-daily-times, #robert-smith-dey, #ruth-pyle-doremus-dey, #susan-dey, #the-partridge-family

Some pre-1914 obituaries from Tazewell County

This is an updated reprint of a “From the Local History Room” column that first appeared in May 2014, just before the launch of this weblog.

Some pre-1914 obituaries from Tazewell County

By Jared Olar
Library assistant

Of the resources available in the Pekin Public Library’s Local History Room, perhaps it is the online obituary index that gets the most use, since obituaries are excellent sources of information for genealogists. The library’s index covers obituaries published in the Pekin Daily Times from Oct. 3, 1914 to the present year – but also includes a handful of obituaries from the Daily Times and other Tazewell County newspapers from prior to 1914.

Until a few years ago, the library’s obituary index was a large file of typed index cards, but the index has been completely digitized and is accessible on the internet through the library’s homepage, at www.pekinpubliclibrary.org, under the “Research” tab, on “Local History Room” page.

The obituary index entries provide the date that each obituary was published in the Pekin Daily Times, along with the page and column numbers. Using that information, an obituary can then be retrieved from the library’s microfilm reels of the Pekin Daily Times.

As said above, the Daily Times microfilm collection begins with the issue published on Oct. 3, 1914, and continues to the present year. The index, however, is even more current, as the library updates it almost daily, whereas the microfilms are current up to the end of 2018 (when all microfilming ceased worldwide). Print editions of the Pekin Daily Times may be consulted for obituaries published since the end of February.

Sadly, there is little recourse for those looking for obituaries that were published in the Pekin Daily Times prior to Oct. 3, 1914. Most copies of Pekin Daily Times issues prior to that date have perished, many having been destroyed in a fire at the newspaper building about a century ago, while other bound volumes of the paper reportedly “disappeared” during and soon after the years in the early 1920s when the newspaper was owned by three members of the Ku Klux Klan.

However, a number of stray issues of the Daily Times from prior to Oct. 3, 1914, have survived, and in fact the library has one of them – the Aug. 16, 1902, edition of the Pekin Daily Times that was preserved in the cornerstone time capsule of the former Pekin Carnegie Library that was built in 1902. Also included in the time capsule were copies of an 1896 Pekin Daily Evening Post, an 1896 Pekin Daily Tribune, and a 1902 Pekin Daily Post-Tribune.

Besides those pre-1914 newspapers, the library archives also include a single issue of the April 13, 1860 edition of the Tazewell Republican, which was donated to the library a few years ago by Timothy Williams of Pekin. There are no formal obituaries in that newspaper, because the custom of publishing biographical tributes of “ordinary” community members who had died was only then starting to catch on. The only thing even remotely like an obituary or death notice in the April 13, 1860 Tazewell Republican was the following short paragraph on page 2:

“The body of the man drowned off the steamer Gaty, something like a month ago, was found on the banks of Spring Lake yesterday or the day previous. The body was identified by the hands, the forefinger of one having been cut off. – Peoria Union.”

The April 13, 1860 edition of the Tazewell Republican newspaper ran this advertisement for the steamboat Sam Gaty on page 3. On the facing page of the same edition was a news brief on the recovery of the body of a Sam Gaty passenger who had fallen overboard and drowned.

On page 3 of the same newspaper is an advertisement that lists the schedule of the trips that the steamboat “Sam Gaty” made between Pekin and Peoria – but while we know the steamer’s full name, the newspaper doesn’t breathe of word of the name of the drowned man. His name probably had appeared in previous issues of the paper, and so the editor, seeking to economize on space on the page, must have decided it wasn’t necessary to repeat the victim’s name.

Unlike the 1860 copy of the Tazewell Republican, the time capsule’s 1896 and 1902 newspapers do include a few obituaries and death or funeral notices, which were added to the library’s online obituary index for the benefit of genealogical researchers in 2014. To each of these index entries have been added research notes indicating that they were printed in newspapers from the Library Cornerstone.

The library’s reference staff will assist genealogists who would like to obtain copies of these pre-1914 obituaries and death and funeral notices, which are listed below. (Note that three individuals had their obituaries published in more than one newspaper.)

Franklin E. Myers, 28, of rural Green Valley, died Feb. 12, 1896 in Pekin, in the Feb. 13, 1896 Pekin Daily Evening Post
Frank Myers, 28, of rural Green Valley, died Feb. 12, 1896 in Pekin, in the Feb. 13, 1896 Pekin Daily Tribune
William Schaumleffel of Pekin, died Feb. 1896, burial Feb. 13, 1896, in the Feb. 13, 1896 Pekin Daily Evening Post
William Schaumleffle of Pekin, died Feb. 1896, burial Feb. 13, 1896, in the Feb. 13, 1896 Pekin Daily Tribune
Samuel Russell, 74, of Pekin, died Aug. 17, 1902, in the Aug. 18, 1902 Pekin Daily Post-Tribune
Bryan George, 6, of Pekin, died Aug. 18, 1902 in Pekin, in the Aug. 18, 1902 Pekin Daily Post-Tribune
George J. Breaden, died Aug. 1902, in the Aug. 18, 1902 Pekin Daily Post-Tribune
George Joseph Breaden, died Aug. 16, 1902 in Pekin, in the Aug. 16, 1902 Pekin Daily Times
Mrs. George H. Youngman, 26, died Aug. 13, 1902, in the Aug. 16, 1902 Pekin Daily Times

A brief genealogical note about this last death notice – according to the Find-A-Grave website, “Mrs. George H. Youngman” was Cora A. (Buck) Youngman, born July 18, 1876, daughter of Oliver and Hannah (Hammitt) Buck, married George H. Youngman on June 7, 1899, and buried in McLean Cemetery, McLean, Ill.

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News of days gone by: the 1st Pekin Daily Times

By Jared Olar
Library assistant

“Citizens of Pekin, here your daily is!”

With these words, the Pekin Daily Times made its debut 139 years ago this month. It began as a four-page broadsheet, with five columns to a page, published by Joseph B. Irwin and W. T. Dowdall, and delivered by four newsboys: Ad Merrill, Charley Wagenseller, Benny Irwin, and Johnny Michael. Joseph Irwin and Dowdall had purchased the Pekin Weekly Register in 1873 and rechristened it the Pekin Weekly Times. On Jan. 3, 1881, Irwin and Dowdall made the risky decision of starting a daily edition of their newspaper.

It was only the second time anyone had ever published a daily paper in Pekin (there was an abortive attempt to publish a daily paper in 1876, when William H. Bates put out a daily called The Pekin Daily Bulletin for nine months, from Jan. 3 to Oct. 5, 1876), and even after the Pekin Daily Times was born, for a while Irwin and Dowdall continued to publish a weekly edition alongside the Daily Times. Over the decades the Daily Times continued to thrive in a local market that included several other weeklies, but one by one its rivals shuttered their offices or were purchased by the Pekin Daily Times, until by the mid-20th century the Daily Times was Pekin’s only newspaper.

Shown here is the top half of the front page of the Pekin Public Library’s copy of the first edition of the Pekin Daily Times, Pekin’s second — and only successful — daily newspaper.

The Times has changed hands several times since Irwin and Dowdall brought it into being, including an ugly two-year period in the early 1920s when it was owned by three leading members of the Ku Klux Klan. The paper enjoyed its greatest success and prosperity under F. F. McNaughton’s leadership, who came to the Times in 1927 and passed away in 1981, when the McNaughton family sold the paper to Howard Publications of California. In 2000 the newspaper was sold to Liberty Group, which later renamed itself GateHouse Media Inc. In the last months of 2019, Gannett Co., owner of the USA Today, and GateHouse merged, so the Daily Times is now a Gannett paper.

In an editorial column apparently written by Irwin on page 3, the publishers announced the new daily paper and issued what amounts to a mission statement for their journalistic endeavor. Here are excerpts from that column:

“For a long time the citizens of Pekin have wished that they might have a daily paper printed in the place – they have wanted a home daily. This statement will not be disputed any where.

“The issuances of this sheet materializes that well-defined wish into a living reality – a palpable fact. The PEKIN DAILY TIMES is born. How long it will live depends entirely upon the good people of Pekin and Tazewell county. If it lives it will be because the people of Pekin and Tazewell sustain it. If it dies, it will be because they do not sustain it. . . .

“That a good daily paper will be of great value to Pekin, no man in his senses will deny. For years Pekin has been over-shadowed, ridiculed, sneered at and derided by the numerous daily papers of the burg on the river just above us. It has been the butt and laughing-stock, a standing subject for the cheap jibes and jokes of these papers forever. We had to bear it because we had nowhere else to go for our daily news. Pekin should have self-respect enough to change this condition of affairs at the first opportunity. That opportunity now presents itself. . . .

“We have many evidences going to show that Pekin has just entered an era of renewed prosperity. All the signs are most encouraging for our little city. It now only needs a daily to vitalize its yet partly dormant energies, to encourage its embryotic enterprises, and to thoroughly advertise its growing prosperity and its very many splendid advantages.

“The DAILY TIMES itself, from day to day, must tell the story of what it is to be. Would you know what this is, you must read it. This only do we promise: That so long as it lives it shall be in every way a credit to Pekin. Its quality shall be as good as a liberal outlay of money can make it.

“Citizens of Pekin, here your daily is! If you like it and want it to live, patronize it. If you don’t like it and don’t want it to live, don’t patronize it.”

The first edition of the Pekin Daily Times filled its front page with news that had come over the telegraph from Washington, D.C., Columbus, Ohio, Grand Haven, Mich., St. Paul, Minn., and New York City, as well as international news from Paris, France, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. In keeping with the usual practice of 19th century newspapers, two whole columns of the front page were given over to local advertising. An opinion column on page 2 warned of the political and cultural influence of the Mormon religion, and decried the Mormon practice of polygamy (which the Mormons did not formally renounce until 1890).

The last page of the paper was taken up by local news – but not what we today would expect of local news coverage. The local news in the first Pekin Daily Times was a long string of items of a prosaic or even mundane nature, chiefly being announcements of family visits, out-of-town trips of Pekin residents, community events, or how Pekinites had enjoyed their sleighing and bobsledding during the New Year’s holiday. As an example: “Ben Towner, of Teller, Col., is in the city on a visit to old friends. He was the second city marshal of Pekin, after it became a city, and is well known by all the old residenters.”

Perhaps the most remarkable local news item in the Daily Times’ first edition was the announcement that Eugene Hyers had been granted a divorce from his wife Anna in Peoria Circuit Court, accompanied by the libelous comment that Mr. Hyers “was drawn into a very unfortunate marriage with a woman who had neither honor or virtue and we congratulate the young man upon his release.”

Definitely not the kind of “news” that would ever make it into print today.

A copy of the first edition of the Pekin Daily Times is on display in the Pekin Public Library’s Local History Room.

#ad-merrill, #anna-hyers, #ben-towner, #benny-irwin, #charley-wagenseller, #eugene-hyers, #f-f-mcnaughton, #johnny-michael, #joseph-b-irwin, #kkk, #mormons, #pekin-daily-bulletin, #pekin-daily-times, #pekin-weekly-times, #polygamy, #the-bulletin, #w-t-dowdall, #william-h-bates

The Pekin Public Library’s early history: A glimpse inside a time capsule

This is a reprint of a “From the Local History Room” column that first appeared in March 2013 before the launch of this weblog.

A glimpse inside a time capsule

By Jared Olar
Library assistant

Each week this column delves into the Pekin Public Library’s Local History Room collection to see what we can learn about various aspects, anecdotes and artifacts of Pekin and Tazewell County history. This week we’ll turn our attention toward the history the Pekin Public Library itself, by taking look at a few of the contents of the library’s Cornerstone Time Capsule collection.

As both longtime residents of Pekin and attentive visitors to the library know, the current library building is not the first one to be erected on it site. Prior to the construction of the current library in 1972, Pekin’s readers were served by a smaller structure that stood at the corner of Fourth Street and Broadway, where the library’s sunken plaza is located today. [NB: Since the 2015 remodel and expansion of the library, the old sunken plaza is no more, replaced by a quiet reading room and a grove of trees with water drainage.]

That earlier structure – one of the nation’s many Carnegie libraries, built in 1902 under the patronage of famous American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie – was the first building constructed in Pekin to serve specifically as a public library. To celebrate that milestone in Pekin’s history, a formal dedication ceremony took place on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 1902.

On that occasion, the library’s cornerstone was laid – and within the cornerstone was placed a time capsule containing an assortment of documents and relics pertaining chiefly to the history of the plans and preparations leading up to the construction of Pekin’s Carnegie library.

The time capsule remained sealed for 70 years. When the old library was replaced with a new, expanded facility in 1972, the cornerstone was opened and the contents of the time capsule were found to be in a very good state of preservation. For many years after that, the cornerstone materials were stored at Herget Bank, later being transferred to the Pekin Public Library’s own historical archives.

Placed in the cornerstone time capsule were five local newspapers, three of them from August 1902 and two of them from February 1896. The reason for including three August 1902 newspapers is obvious – they are issues with dates that are close to the day of the cornerstone laying: the Pekin Daily Post-Tribune of Aug. 18, 1902, the Pekin Daily Times of Aug. 16, 1902, and the Pekin Freie Presse of Aug. 14, 1902. (Pekin formerly had a German language newspaper due to the heavy influx of German immigrants to Pekin in the mid- to late 1800s.)

The reason for including the two newspapers from February 1896 is probably not obvious to anyone not well versed in the library’s history, however. Those newspapers – the Pekin Daily Tribune and the Pekin Daily Evening Post, both of 13 Feb. 1896 – were chosen because that date was close to the day that the library became a municipal body of Pekin’s city government.

The library’s history did not begin in 1902, but in fact reaches back to 1866, as we read in one of the documents placed in the 1902 cornerstone: a “History of the Pekin Public Library” written by Miss Mary Gaither. “On November 24th, 1866, a large number of the ladies of Pekin met to organize what was for many years known as the ‘Ladies Library Association,’” Gaither wrote. Also included in the cornerstone was one of the handwritten invitations to that meeting.

On March 5, 1883, the Pekin Library Association formally incorporated under the laws of the State of Illinois – the original, sealed articles of incorporation from 1883 also were included in the cornerstone time capsule.

Ten years later, on Feb. 6, 1893, the Library Association petitioned the city to have the library and its collection handed over to the city’s ownership. The process of transferring the library from private to public control was completed three years later, in 1896.

Shown here is part of the front page of the Feb. 13, 1896, Pekin Daily Tribune, one of the newspapers that was preserved in the 1902 Pekin Public Library cornerstone time capsule.

Shown here is the top front of the outer sleve of the Feb. 13, 1896, Pekin Daily Tribune, one of the newspapers that was preserved in the 1902 Pekin Public Library cornerstone time capsule.

#andrew-carnegie, #carnegie-library, #ladies-library-association, #library-cornerstone, #mary-gaither, #pekin-daily-evening-post, #pekin-daily-times, #pekin-daily-tribune, #pekin-freie-presse, #pekin-library-association, #pekin-library-cornerstone-time-capsule, #preblog-columns

When ‘Zerwekh’ meant ‘ice cream’

This is a slightly updated version of a “From the Local History Room” column that first appeared in May 2012 before the launch of this weblog.

When ‘Zerwekh’ meant ‘ice cream’

By Jared Olar
Library assistant

Residents of Pekin today have several ways to satisfy their ice cream cravings, including at Dairy Queen on Second Street, Double D’s or the Sweet Spot on Eighth, and Steak ’n Shake or Culver’s on Court. But there was a time when all the ice cream in town came from one place: Zerwekh’s in downtown Pekin.

The Zerwekh family no longer lives in Pekin, but they were long a fixture of Pekin social life and business thanks to the Zerwekh Brothers’ bakery and confectionary at 20 S. Fourth St.

“Both Robert Hill and Albert Zerwekh were popular caterers,” says the 1974 Pekin Sesquicentennial. “Zerwekh’s three-story pressed-brick building housed a bakery and confectionary on the ground floor and basement, and the Masonic Hall occupied the second and third floors. The building was considered a major contribution to the beautification of the city, and today has come to be known as the Times Building, for it houses the operations of the local newspaper. Zerwekh’s was famous for its ice cream, delicate ices, and soft drinks.”

The name of Zerwekh appears in the very first Pekin City Directory, which was published in 1861: “Gottlob J. Zerwekh, proprietor of St. Louis Exchange, 87 Court St.” That was Gottlob Jakob Zerwekh, also known as Gottlieb, one of the many German immigrants who settled in Pekin in the mid-1800s. He and his wife Christiana F. Schnaitman were born in Württemberg. The 1860 U.S. Census shows Gottlieb and Christiana living in Peoria with their sons William G., age 3, and Albert, age 1. By the time of the 1870 census, they were living in Pekin, along with a daughter Bertha, age 3.

In that year, the Sellers & Bates City Directory lists “G.J. Zerwekh” as a “manufacturer of soda water” on Henrietta Street between Second and Third streets. Six years later, the city directory shows that he had entered into a partnership with Herman Karstedt. Their business, at the same location as in 1870, was “Zerwekh & Karstedt, manfr soda and mineral waters and ginger ale.” By 1876, Gottlob’s son William was a clerk at Schaub & Smiley’s, while Albert was a cook at Strader & Kennedy’s.

Albert next appears in the 1887 City Directory, listed as a baker and confectioner, with his bakery at 112-114 S. Fourth Street. Albert next shows up in the 1893 City Directory, having moved his bakery to 16-18 S. Fourth. That was about the time he built the Zerwekh Building at 20 S. Fourth.

This photograph of the Zerwekh Building, originally the home of Albert Zerwekh Baker & Confectionary, was printed in 1899 in “Cole’s Souvenir of Pekin,” a booklet of photos produced by Pekin’s pioneer photographer Henry Hobart Cole.

According to the “Zerwekh Family Tree” published at Ancestry.com, Albert was born Sept. 22, 1859, in Tazewell County. On Aug. 30, 1883, he married Ida F. Maus (1864-1940), daughter of Charles T. Maus and Hattie J. Prettyman. Both the Maus and Prettyman families were among Pekin’s earliest settlers and are prominent in our city’s early history. Albert and Ida had two sons, George Ernest Zerwekh (1884-1959) and Edward Schenck Zerwekh (1886-1983).

This newspaper ‘cut’ of Pekin confectioner and baker Albert Zerwekh was printed at the bottom right corner of the back page of the 13 Feb. 1896 issue of the Pekin Daily Tribune.

The family tree states that Albert died of colon cancer on 10 April 1908 after an illness of six months. He is buried in Lakeside Cemetery in Pekin. After his untimely death, his sons carried on the family business at the same location. The Pekin Sesquicentennial says, “Before the Soldwedels opened their new factory [in 1920], grocers had purchased their butter directly from local farmers, and ice cream had been supplied solely by the Zerwekh Brothers at 20 South Fourth (presently the Times Building); ice cream was available year round in their store, and they also supplied the local drugstores in all but the winter months, when the soda fountains were covered with plywood and used for Christmas displays. In the 20’s Zerwekh’s stopped making ice cream, so the new Soldwedel operation assumed the responsibility on a much larger scale.”

This photograph showing the interior of Albert Zerwekh Baker & Confectionary was printed in 1899 in “Cole’s Souvenir of Pekin.”

Later, the second floor of the Zerwekh Building was a popular venue for young people in town, because it served as a dance hall where bands provided live music. In 1941, however, the Zerwekh Building was purchased by F.F. McNaughton, owner and publisher of the Pekin Daily Times, which had moved next door to Zerwekh’s in 1905-1906. The Zerwekh brothers moved to California, where they died.

As for the aged Zerwekh Building, as we recalled last week, its long and varied history drew to its end in early Oct. 2013. The Daily Times moved out in late Aug. 2012, and the Zerwekh Building’s new owner, Tazewell County, demolished it the following year to make a parking lot.

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