Remembering ‘When Chicago Was Young’
An imagined winter scene from the city’s past
For almost 30 years, Herma Clark wrote the Tribune’s popular Sunday column “When Chicago Was Young,” giving readers a glimpse of what life was like in Chicago at the end of the 19th century. She did this through the artifice of letters written by a fictitious Chicagoan named Martha Freeman Esmond to her friend Julia Boyd in New York. The weekly letters, which the Tribune began publishing in 1929, described important moments, people and events in Chicago’s history.
“It is this happy ingenuity — this facile weaving into the pattern of a by-gone day the names and personalities of present day Chicagoans, descendants of those fine old families who made early civic history — that endears the column When Chicago Was Young to old and young alike,” the Tribune noted in 1953.
Today, we are running a column published in 1936 and set in December 1886 that describes a long-ago winter scene in Forest Glen, the Northwest Side neighborhood that didn’t become part of Chicago until a few years later. Accompanying the letter are historical photos of sleigh rides from the Tribune’s archive. We hope you enjoy this look back to when Chicago was young.
DEAR JULIA: It has been a beautiful winter day and Will and I took a sleigh ride out to Forest Glen, away out in the country, to the northwest. It is a lovely little suburb, and we enjoyed the trip so much. We were warmly wrapped and had a soapstone at our feet, so it was not too cold for comfort. Will wore a knitted scarf, to which he clings, though they are going out of fashion, for which I’m sorry. Martha [a daughter] knitted this scarf for her father some years ago, and he has always liked it. It is gray, with rows of shaded colors, red, brown, and purple at the ends.
Some men are taking up with the fashion of ear muffs, which are so homely. Don’t you dislike seeing a black velvet lump standing out on each side of a man’s head? A gayly colored scarf is much prettier, I think.
To return to Forest Glen. We went out to spend the day with Capt. and Mrs. William Hazelton. Capt. Hazelton is an army friend of Will’s ... both were in the cavalry service ... and we had promised for I don’t know how long to make this trip. We should have gone in summer, when the flowers were in bloom, but even in winter the country looked attractive.
The Hazeltons would delight you, for, though they live simply, they are cultivated people, and we felt we had been in high company. The captain, as everyone calls him, is of Quaker lineage. His mother was a cousin of Benjamin Franklin. Both our host and his wife came from New Hampshire, where they had been school teachers. Capt. Hazelton told us his first salary was eleven dollars a month and “board round.” I’m happy that teachers are better paid today.
Will drew from the captain the story of his pioneering days in Minnesota, when he helped build a bridge a hundred miles north of Minneapolis, on the Mississippi River. The contractor failed, at the close of the season, leaving his men ... of whom Capt. Hazelton was one ... unpaid and stranded in the wilderness. The men were resourceful enough to build a raft, on which they made their way down the river to the twin cities.
Will enjoyed reliving army days with our host. Capt. Hazelton, who was in the Eighth Illinois cavalry, led one of the companies pursuing Wilkes Booth after he had assassinated President Lincoln, though he was not Booth’s captor.
At the close of the war he brought his bride to Illinois, buying the farm, which now bids fair to become the little town of Forest Glen, for it is being divided up into town lots, and through his efforts the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad has built a station there.
There is no church in the village yet, but the Hazeltons have started a little Sunday school in a frame house, where the captain says he is superintendent, treasurer, and janitor. Will says he has heard that he is a sort of patriarch in the village, taking care of all the needy families.
Mrs. Hazelton showed us the small nursery where they keep trees raised from seeds. These little trees are now being transferred to the streets of Forest Glen. A beautiful thing to do ... planting trees in a prairie country. These trees promise to be a great asset to the town.
I am so pleased that you expect to be with us for New Year’s day. I presume you will come by the Lake Shore route. But you’ll be writing us of the exact time, before you come. Be sure we shall be on hand at the station to meet you. Love to my dear friend of many years.