OCR Text |
Show my ELOW the bluffs which ) a p 1 skirt the shore of Fort JJ I Sheridan military reser- f I I a. I vation the waves of Lake If Iw if 1 1 Mlch'san wash over the L Jl II Mr it slte of a loBt town- A LCt When the winds of a few Zr ' mora storms shall have l I jV blown to the beach two r L II Al) apple trees which have ti but a frail footing at the I embankment's edge the last reminders of y, once thriving and populous place will X have been swept away. Vi Almost seventy years ago the hamlet -of St John was founded by a man named N. Hettinger and a few of his followers. The site chosen was a commanding one J a the Muff overlooking the lake and ae-hK mile east of the point where the northwestern north-western depot at the Village of Hlghwood now stands. The great clay bank with the stretch of and beach which shelves away to the water's edge . , i i , i . , . . w . f v v ... frsO - '-- - . ; ' ; north VSr-vP'ifc f , v g, v ss fx2W$&, , .' "."' 5headngd Nir v tv?c safe I , ( - , plain I . T 1 gM;--- foun -'..'t', " I Dn the ST tj?$?2' I aution. I" ' I on the If 4' idge of ' ' Pass- iS--'-----..- fe:i;i.!IlpMrlfi aclared -' w-,"-.:...r.J.-,... . SlmiA I :ss and wHZsg wn&Z mss 3BVQ?&jamSli&. ''wmisaii l its loot loons as it it were strong enougn and far enough removed from the breakers to be safe against the angriest northeaster that ever blew The men who built their houses upon the plain surmounting the embankment thought their foundations foun-dations were as sure as though founded on the traditional rock. They did take the precaution kowver, to limit their building operations on the at by a line drawn fifty yards from the edge of the bluff. That line has long since been buried in the sand under the waves, and with It are the houses and the shops of the early settlers. In the year 1845 the Village of St. John was the rival of Waukegan, which was then called Little Fort. Both were prosperous and both were growing. grow-ing. Highwood tradition hath it that people passing pass-ing through the two places from Chicago declared that St, John showed the ear marks of success and that it was destined to he a hie- rltv Dthor runnic - o J' - " fvt. beside the Chicagoans thought so, too, and they flocked to the place and built substantial houses and shops. The two apple trees which alone remain re-main of all that pertained to the Village of St. John grew In the yard of Sebastian Richards, whose house' was farther removed from the lake than any other in the village. The apple trees were back of the residence. Not long ago the foundation of bricks, which was all. that was left of Richard's dwelling, Blid down the "bluff into the lake during the height of a winter win-ter storm. The roots of one of the apple trees are even now extending Into the air through the side of the embankment. One good strong push would send It hurtling to the beach 100 feet below. Among the names of the builders of St. John In addition to those of Hettinger and Sebastian Richards, the only ones that the oldest High-wood High-wood inhabitants can remember, are Frank ilitch, Peter Baker and George Shepard. Mitch was a shoemaker and it Is said that he is still following the trade in a town in the far north. Aa fnv or, ! 1 ..... 1 ! iv. , , saw year by year that the face of the bluff was being gradually worn away, but the erosion was so slow that they gave little heed. One night in the winter of 1852 a storm whipped up out of the northeast.. It was forty-eight forty-eight hours before it led fully spent Its force. Before Be-fore its assaults, the bluff gave way, tons upon tons of the hard clay breaking off In great pieces and falling to the beach. When the wind ceased blowing the barn of the dwelling nearest to the lake stood at the edge of the embankment. The villagers started to move the structure inland, but another storm, coming up suddenly, forced them to stop the work, and -cio mi ao 13 lUUffU UB la LUti UUiy KUrVlVOT OI the men who founded the Village of St. John. In the year 1847 there were several stores, a blacksmith shop, a tavern and a postofflce in the Village of St. John, which then held a population popula-tion of about 200 people. In that day there was a stage coach line between Chicago and Milwaukee. Mil-waukee. The tavern at St. John was a relay station for the stage. Henry Mowers, who remembers re-members the village in its latter days, says that the tavern was noted for its table, and its liquor, and that people frequently took the stage journey from Chicago for the sole purpose of getting a good dinner and a good glass. It was a man who intended becoming a resident resi-dent of St. John that afterward founded the Village of Half Day. He had looked over the lakeside village, and then had declared that he would establish one that would laBt longer and bad more people in it. The automobillsts who very Sunday pass through Half Day on their runs to Waukegan and return may look on the half-dozen houses there assembled, and know that the man who turned hlg back on St. John has kept his word. When the Chicago and Milwaukee railroad wag built the surveyed line ran one-half mile west of the Village of St. John. An adequate idea of the importance of a place of which now barely bare-ly a vestige remains may be had when it is known that the railroad authorities built a spur line running to the south edge of the town. Some of the practical residents of the place had discovered that an excellent quality of brick could be made from the clay which was found in a pit a short dlstanco south of the blacksmith shop. As a matter of fact, the presence of thiB before it could be resumed the barn, in the shape of disjointed Joists and broken planks, was being be-ing tossed about by the waves. It was about this time that the people of St. John received a visitor who was much more unwelcome than the storm. This visitor was a lawyer armed with a lot of formidable-looking papers He went to the tavern and asked that the elders of the village be sent for. They came. The lawyer told them that their title to the land which they occupied was extremely faulty and that they must either pay again for the ground on which their homes stood, or got out. The villagers made up their minds to fight the matter mat-ter out, but preliminary court proceedings showed them that the lawyer had fully as good a case as he claimed. They became disheartened, and when another terrific storm arose, and the blacksmith's black-smith's shop and George Shepard's house went into the lake they lost all courage. They told the lawyer that the lake seemed to have a better bet-ter claim to the land than either they or he had, and that it apparently was bent on enforcing enforc-ing title rights. One by one the people of St. John moved away, leaving their dwelling and stores to the will of the wind and waves. Settlements Set-tlements sprang up to the south and the west of the deserted village, and the people, during the height of winter storms, used to go to a place iear the bluff and watch for some deserted dwelling dwell-ing standing perilously near the edge of the embankment to fall with one final crash onto the water-swept sand below. 1 Henry Mowers, an old time hunter was a veteran vet-eran of the residents near the site of the lost village. Not long after the disappearance in the only. Here was a puzzle which even his shrewdness shrewd-ness could not solve. The coins were silver and of full weight, and in that day silver, was of sufficient intrinsic value to make it useless for anyone to make counterfeits out of the pure metal. Mowers searched for another week, but found no more coins. He then showed the result re-sult of his labor to neighbors and to some people in the city of Chicago. He said nothing about where he had discovered the treasure. Shortly afterward, however, a man offered htm $100 for the secret, and though Mowers told him that the place was probably worked out the man offered of-fered the money, said he would take the chance, and the offer was accepted. The purchaser never found anything and gave up the labor In disgust. It was not long before the story of the place where the coins had been picked up became generally gen-erally known and the people flocked to the bluff and to the beach marking the site of the lost town. They dug, searched and prospected with all the ardor of Klondikers, but the sole result was a gold piece of the value of $2.50, which a boy picked up from the wake of a retreating wave. The collection of coin which Henry Mowers Mow-ers found is now in the possession of a man who once ran a Chicago dime museum. No one has ever been able to account for the presence of the money in the place. The theory that It was loft behind by a departing resident of St. John Is said to be hardly tenable, because the people of that place were not rich enough to make them careless of valuables. Thore Is one metal which the prospector may find In abundance if he will go to St. John before me two oia appin trees tumble down trie biun. The trunks and branches of both of them are full of lead. The trees stood just at the cud of the old Sixth infantry rifle butt. For three years before the building of the present post the troops that first came to Fort Sheridan pumped lead at target practice into the butt and incidentally Into the apple trees at the side. Despite the attacks of the weather and this leaden onslaught the two trees bore a burden of fruit for years as sound and as sweot as that which bout tholr branches at the time when the town of St. John was something more substantial substan-tial than a momory. brickyard was one of the chief reasons that the branch line of the railroad was built. When Uncle Sam accepted from the Commercial Club of Chicago the land to the north of the city as a military reservation the Boldlers drew hundreds hun-dreds of cartloads of both good brick and broken brick from the site of the old brickyard and used the material for temporary road-making and for the filling in of swamp spots. The forethought fore-thought of tho St. John people In leaving behind be-hind thorn specimens of their handiwork saved the United States government a great many dollars. It Is possible to trace today with no difficulty at all the embankment upon which th Branch line of the railroad ran to the brickyard an to the now lost Village of St. John. In slas and outline It looks like a military redoubt, and It would perfectly answer the purpose of one. Ths embankment was leveled at Its western ea when stores wore erected In the Village of Hljh-wood. Hljh-wood. It starts now from a point almost lrot-ly lrot-ly back of the little Methodist church, and rns eastward, broken only by roads which hr tmo dug through it. It was Ions than ten years after the foundlsf of St. John that the people awakened to a possible possi-ble danger to their homos by the encroachment of the waves of the lake. It Is tru that thoy laftD U mo iaoi uuimiuft Ui LLIU villus Ul PI. John, Mowers took a spade and walked up the lake shore until he came to the point where a largo part of the site of St. John had disappeared disap-peared beneath the waves. Mowers' trip was taken up at sunrise, a time when he was not likely to be Interrupted In his work. He began a series of mysterious diggings Just at the base of the mud cliff. He worked for two hours and then quit. He returned to hli task every morning morn-ing for a week, making several new excavations a foot or two In septa each time. One morning tae spade struck something- hard, and in a minute min-ute Mowers had umarthe4 as Ingot of pure copper cop-per weighing olghtu posnds. This was worth hng, but it was not what Mowors was after. Ha hovt on digging lor a month, and nt the end of that time mad cured gold and silver French a4 Spanish plooos In value, to the amount of M. Ia aUoo he found somo United States Pr coats a4 half-cents of an early dnte and om bronze Roman coin of tho period of Nero. Mowers kept at his work for wooks. but after unoartUtag tha Roman pieeo ho found nothing for a long time. He was about to glvoup the work for good. Ho shouldered his spado and started homeward. On the sand, glistening In tho sun at the water's edge, Just an ho turned to go for supponodly the last time, he found two Unllnd States silver dollars mini ml on ana sldo |