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This cartoon illustrates young people driving to a remote destination to purchase illegal liquor, a common problem during Prohibition. McHenry County had its share of Prohibition-related problems when Al Capone's "Valley Gang" controlled the illegal beer trade in the area. Local History Comes Alive
Craig L. Pfannkuche As a youngster I lived in an 1880s farmhouse along the Fox River northwest of Chicago. I was told that the place had served as a vacation retreat for such notables as Anton Cermack, mayor of Chicago, who was assassinated in 1933 while standing next to Franklin D. Roosevelt. When I became a historian specializing in the history of American culture and heard much of Prohibition-era turmoil, including Cermack's involvement, I wondered if the home where I grew up had been involved. I began looking through the area newspapers of the period, and, although I never confirmed the Cermack connection, I did find that in late 1927 Alford Pouse, the state's attorney of McHenry County had fled the county "for parts unknown" when he found that he was going to be accused of being a "rum runner." I had discovered a story long buried by time and local embarrassment. I wanted to know if Pouse was politically connected to Cermack and, perhaps, to the infamous Al Capone. I gathered a lot of information that suggested that Pouse had actually been framed by a powerful political rival who was connected to the "Valley Gang," Capone's organization that controlled the beer trade in the Chain-of-Lakes and Fox River Valley. After discovering the information, it became important to find and interview those few remaining elderly citizens who had actually been involved in the political intrigues in the county. Certainly, the area's newspapers slanted the news depending on how the owners of the papers felt about the politicians involved in the 1927 scandal, and personal interviews of still-living witnesses would help give me an alternate viewpoint. I told my high school classes about the "beer wars" that had taken place in their own area, but they were much more interested when I mentioned that I received a death threat after I attempted to interview a family that still had "Mob" connections. This living link to the past excited them to want to know more about who might still be in the area. Remembering that students in chemistry classes actually practice chemistry, I thought that it might be a good idea if history students learn history by actually doing historical research. Broad-spectrum texts do not personalize major historical trends to allow active learning involvement. Having students go "in the field" under supervision, develop their own research designs, and obtain supporting evidence teaches skills necessary to understanding how history is recorded. In addition, such activity provides personal excitement, enhances a sense of identification with the historical drama, and, most im-
This 1932 cartoon of bootlegging in the bathtub is an indication that some Americans ignored the Prohibition amendment. portantly, leads to a deeper understanding of the impact of historical events more than any text or classroom presentation could. Further, connections can be made to a variety of writing class objectives for solidly integrated learning. Student historians soon began turning up obituaries that provided clues as to what was going on during the beer wars. New names were added to lists of individual's whose recollections added color and impact to the story. Still, it became apparent that we needed to hear Alford Pouse's side of the story. It was student-discovered obituaries published by Pouse relatives who had remained in McHenry County that began to point to the fact that Pouse had gone to either Pennsylvania or New Jersey in 1927. Obituaries concerning the death of Alford Pouse's wife led us to discover where his granddaughter lived. A telephone call brought to light the astounding fact that Pouse's granddaughter had in her possession the actual diaries that her grandfather had kept during those turbulent times. After gaining her confidence, she revealed: My grandfather told me as a little girl, "Some day someone will come and ask you if I have any diaries. Find out who they are and why they want them. It you trust them, tell them that they contain some politically explosive information which names the names of those in McHenry County who ruined my life with their lies." If you believe that my grandfather was innocent of the charges against him, I will let you see the diaries. The woman requested that, before she would let us see the diaries, we produce some evidence that Pouse was not guilty of the charges against him. That came when a student researcher found data on a raid on an illegal still in September 1928 by a "citizen's committee" of area citizens angry that the prohibition laws were not being enforced by the man who had replaced Pouse's mortal political enemy. In that raid, the still keeper had been captured. Within a few days, Al Capone's favorite lawyers, Nash and Aherns, came to McHenry County to see that their client was released. The McHenry County State's Attorney agreed with them and demanded that Earl Schultz be released to the "hands of law and order." Cole Peterson, the citizen committee leader, refused, citing the fact that just as the raid began, a special state's attorney's deputy appeared at the site saying that the state's attorney was well aware of what was happening at the site. He, in the name of the state's attorney, demanded that the raid be stopped. A few days later, Peterson's house was bombed. The papers reported that no serious investigation of the event was undertaken. Schultz was finally released when the state's attorney began to take legal action against Peterson and other citizen's committee members for trespass, assault, and kidnapping. When this information was forwarded to Pouse's granddaughter along with 1928 newspaper asser-
tions by a private investigator hired by the county's Board of Supervisors that Pouse's political enemies were involved with Capone's Valley Gang, she sent the original diaries for our inspection. Their pages provided an exciting association with the past that allows history to be understood in the best educational context possible. Even though the students of that year's research have written their reports and articles, some published in local newspapers as well as historical and genealogical journals, the search had not ended. On June 1, 1930, in nearby Fox Lake, Illinois, five people were machine gunned while meeting at a still-standing lakeside resort called the Manning Hotel. The shooting was probably the last "battle" of the area's beer wars, which left Capone's Valley Gang in control of alcohol distribution in the Fox River Valley. Student research suggests that one of the wounded was a Crystal Lake resident connected to the Pouse scandal. Avenues for continued student research and historical writing remain open. Other subjects in the local area remain to be examined. For example, the mayor of Woodstock, Illinois, was murdered by the commandant of the Confederate Cahaba Prison as the Civil War came to an end. Copies of letters that discuss the potential war crime investigation have been obtained, along with correspondence concerning the case from the published War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and the Confederate Armies. As this is published, students will be writing to historical archives and museums seeking to find out what happened to the person who murdered the mayor of Woodstock in 1865. We hope to discover unpublished letters and diaries that might divulge how the killer lived in the west following the war. He had taken $40,000 in Union money, confiscated from war prisoners who were with him as the war ended. He was never apprehended, although documents from the National Archives suggest where he was living in the late 1860s. Another class will be researching why a local Civil-War hero went off to fight even though his diary entries continued to spout hatred of the abolitionist cause. Those who are less interested in war will research how local relatives of those who died in Chicago's disastrous 1903 Iroquois Theater fire coped with that loss. Still others will be reviewing local newspapers to discover additional connections between local residents and major events of national and world importance. Their task will be to provide openings for additional avenues for useful historical research. What has been described above can be duplicated in all the counties of Illinois. The effect of history's great events described in general history texts had strong impact in thousands of local communities across the state. Utilization of those events as discovered in local newspapers and county histories and supported by documents available from the National Archives, the Illinois State Archives, the Illinois Historical Library, county historical societies, local library collections, as well as the stories from those who still remain to give testimony, can take place in any school. These sources are useful for teachers and students who believe in making historical study an active process. Al Capone, far right, stands next to his attorneys in a Chicago courtroom.
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