MONMOUTH, Ill. — As long ago as the early 1960s, downtown Monmouth merchants were worried about the encroachment of shopping centers and discount stores on traditional retail establishments. We know now that they had good reason to worry.
One of those merchants was about as traditional as you could find. Fred Schmitz, who for more than a quarter century ran a fabric store on the Public Square, showing up every day wearing a white shirt and bowtie, announced in 1963 that he was going to retire. …
MONMOUTH, Ill. — Sometimes an architectural feature of a residential property can survive long after the residence associated with it is gone. A good example is the sturdy brick and iron fence surrounding Warfield Manor apartments at the corner of East Broadway and North 3rd Street.
Constructed more than a century ago, the fence tells a portion of the history of the block, as does the remnant of an earlier fence adjoining it.
Five prominent names from Monmouth history figure in the block’s history — Babcock, Paine, Pattee, Tubbs and Warfield.
One of Monmouth’s earliest settlers, dry goods merchant Draper…
MONMOUTH, Ill. — In the 19th century, Monmouth boasted a long line of wealthy capitalists. Names like Hardin, Quinby, Hanna, Weir and Pattee are inscribed on impressive monuments in Monmouth Cemetery.
Then there was Calvin S. Orth. He lies beneath a modest headstone, did not live in a Broadway mansion and is little remembered, but his accomplishments were no less remarkable.
Born in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, in 1835, Orth was the son of a tanner who later became a successful farmer and encouraged each of his nine children to pursue higher education. …
MONMOUTH, Ill. — If you’ve ever called someone a “bonehead,” you can thank a Monmouth man for coining that word, along with many of the colorful phrases that have made their way into the lexicon of sports writing.
Charles Dryden, born on a farm near Monmouth in 1860, has been acknowledged by many baseball historians as “the dean of sports writers.” …
MONMOUTH, Ill. — The history of Greek life at Monmouth College is both long and proud, but it is also remarkably complicated, due to a United Presbyterian Church edict against secret societies that caused the college Senate to ban fraternities from campus for nearly half a century.
Greek-letter organizations at Monmouth began immediately after the Civil War, when returning veterans were granted charters in 1865 by the national fraternities Delta Tau Delta and Beta Theta Pi. Monmouth’s pioneering women’s fraternities, Pi Beta Phi and Kappa Kappa Gamma, were organized in 1867 and 1870, respectively. Phi Gamma Delta was founded in…
MONMOUTH, Ill. — Throughout much of the 19th century, most laundry was done by hand in a laborious process that often stretched over three days. Some cities offered commercial laundries, but the work was still done by hand, often by Chinese immigrants who toiled long working days for minimal wages. The invention of the steam laundry began to change all that.
Steam laundries did not clean with steam. Rather, they made use of a boiler and a steam engine to power the machinery. …
MONMOUTH, Ill. — With the sales of bottled water growing steadily in recent years, the long-term future of carbonated beverages is uncertain, but 130 years ago Monmouth residents were enthusiastic about the relatively new phenomenon of bottled soda, or “pop,” as it was known even back then.
That fact was brought to light when I received a recent query from Ken Allaman of West Burlington, Iowa — a super-collector of historical Monmouth memorabilia. He has in his collection an unusually shaped green beverage bottle embossed with “E. B. W./MONMOUTH/ILLS.” Allaman assumed the B. W. stood for bottling works, but wondered…
MONMOUTH, Ill. — In isolated, rural western Illinois, in the days before radio and television, one might suppose that an incident that occurred off the coast of Newfoundland would have little significance, but that was far from the case when news of the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912, reached Monmouth and its surrounds.
The disaster hit home when it was revealed that a Bushnell man was among the wreck’s more than 1,500 victims. Two residents of Kirkwood had also booked transportation on the ship for its return trip to England. …
MONMOUTH, Ill. — If you’ve ever called someone a “bonehead,” you can thank a Monmouth man for coining that word, along with many of the colorful phrases that have made their way into the lexicon of sports writing.
Charles Dryden, born on a farm near Monmouth in 1860, has been acknowledged by many baseball historians as “the dean of sports writers.” …
BERWICK, Ill. — Just as the works of Ernest Hemingway and Jack London achieved their power from the writers’ personal experiences, the works of Ben D. Cable earned him the title “the Farmer Sculptor.”
Born on a farm just north of Berwick in 1865, Benjamin Davis Cable showed an aptitude for drawing and painting from an early age, while attending the district school in Floyd Township. A voracious reader, he schooled himself on all aspects of the arts, and in his spare time on the farm took up sketching farm animals and wildlife.
