Chapter 3: The Pioneers

The story of Niles Township might have kept to the same slow tempo had not conditions in central Europe given it a different turn. All unwittingly Wilhelm I and Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia and Count Bismarck changed the course of history in this region.

From 1830 to 1848 Europe was a seething stew of wars and revolutions, of constitutions granted and withdrawn. The ruling families made determined efforts to hold their position and power by main force against the awakening masses. The people stirred with the new conviction that control belonged by right to them, not to the monarch.

The French Revolution had aroused the common man, and the Declaration of Independence had repercussions in Europe. The great reigning houses of Hohenzollern, Hapsburg and Bourbon fought each other for territory, and their subjects were caught in the melee that swept the Continent.

Bismark laid a heavy hand upon the smaller states to unite them under Prussia. This he succeeded in doing, but in the process wrought rebellion among the Germanic peoples. Disgusted with military service and exploitation, they turned to America.

To top off the general discontent, l849 was a year of famine in Germany. The grain crop failed and the total potato crop rotted. The peasants were reduced to near starvation. This combination of evil forces, political and economic, precipitated the great German migration to the Midwest with its rich agricultural areas. Niles Township became a bit of transplanted Germany, and German it remained at least until the close of World War II.

Every life is a story. To do justice to the sturdy pioneers would require a book which should be written before time blots out the records. In the space which can be allotted to this era of our history, roughly the 1840s and early 1850s, the narrative must be limited to a few representative men, and apologies made to the many Skokie descendants of the others.

The real founder of the village of Niles Center (Skokie) is considered to be Henry Harms, known in those days as "Farmer Harms", who, in December 1854, built a small frame house almost on the site of the present Municipal Building.

A native of Mecklenburg, he came to America in 1851. After working three years on a farm near Chicago he came here to buy one of his own. Later he engaged in the building trades and, along with another contractor laid the foundation of the Chicago courthouse.

In Niles Center he filled many public offices including those of Constable, Street Commissioner, Supervisor, and Postmaster. Under Governor Beveridge he was Drainage Commissioner for Cook County and superintended the drainage project in Niles Township. For six years he ran a store, which was later taken over by his brother-in-law, George C. Klehm.

During the autumn of the Chicago fire he was running for County Treasurer and was thought to have been elected, but was unable to prove it to his opponent because the ballots burned.

George C. Klehm, born in Dudelsheim, Hesse Darmstadt in 1839, came to America with his widowed mother and his brother John in 1851. When they reached Buffalo she had only seven dollars left from the sale of her property.

For two years all three worked for farmers near Buffalo and then George worked at bricklaying in that city, a trade to which he had already been apprenticed in Germany. Early in 1855, he came to Jefferson Park where he went to school during the winter months and later taught until he had earned his teacher's certificate in 1860.

He taught one term in Northfield and three in Niles Center. He moved here in l864 and for forty years held numerous offices: Street Commissioner, Postmaster, and for many terms Town Clerk and Township Treasurer. He served in the State Legislature one term and in l88l was elected to the Cook County Board, of which for some years he was chairman.

Michael Harrer, with his father Wolfgang and his brother Henry, came from Kaltenbrunn in the Oberfall in 1845 and settled on East Prairie, later to become active in the township and in the village of Morton Grove. John Dilg was another early settler in Morton Grove, coming in 1856 and opening a store there two years later.

The earliest pioneers in Lincolnwood were George and Magdaline Proesel, natives of Bavaria, who came to the United States with their six children in 1844. From Bremen, Germany, their sea voyage took several weeks. From New York they came by way of Albany to Buffalo and up the Great Lakes to Chicago.

Mr. Proesel had $2,000 with him, and coming directly to this area, bought a farm of 160 acres in Section 35, the northeast corner of Lincolnwood, a part of the open country then known as East Prairie.

At the time there were very few settlers to the north of him. He began at once to clear his land and farmed there until his death in 1884 at the age of 82. He was the grandfather of Henry Proesel, who for many years had been Village President of Lincolnwood.

Johann Tess, also from Mecklenberg, came here in l856 and made a farm in the southern portion of the township. The village we now call Lincolnwood took its earlier name from him and was known as Tessville until l935.

To Niles Center came Ernest Galitz from Pomerania in 1867, and the first Peter Blameuser in 1865 after 13 years in Chicago.

In Niles in the early 1850s, Dr. Theodore Hoffman was the sole doctor for miles in any direction. His only means of reaching the sick was by picking his way through the woods on horseback, saddlebags packed with his medicines and instruments.

In later years he often told of the night he left a case late and missed the trail homeward. He wandered through the forests a part of the night until he saw a light. Following its rays, he found a cabin and aroused its occupants.

They took him in and he spent the rest of the night on a pile of shavings in a corner. The breakfast they shared with him was potatoes, and bread, with no trimmings for either. In early days no pioneer refused shelter and food to a prospective settler, for those who had established homes were glad to have others locate near them.

With so many century-old names surviving in the four villages of the township, it is an unhappy task to choose between them and eliminate all but a few. Each name is a story of leave taking of the homeland and of privations and perseverance in the new country.

- Originally published in The Villager, Thursday, May 29, 1958, pp. 16-18

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