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A memorable spring for markers
Seldom has so much history met with so much cast aluminum as it did this spring in Illinois. The Illinois State Historical Society has co-sponsored and helped dedicate 9 new markers and one restored marker since April a possible record in the Society's history. The new markers are:
For more information about the new markers, visit the Society's website at www. historyillinois.org. ILLINOIS HERITAGE| 21 Remarks Dedicating The Senator John Humphrey Home Marker May 12, 2007 by Redd Griffin Robert and Violet Elli talked about Senator John Humphrey's house for all the years I have known them. Now, in May, the same month Senator Humphrey built it in 1881, we dedicate a marker at this site that they and their colleagues have worked so hard to preserve and recognize. Today we look back gratefully with them at their untold hours of work leading to this day. Today we look forward hopefully with them to untold hours of enlightenment visitors will find here. This marker is a window to broader, deeper, historical awareness for all who read it and reflect on it.
Most basically, this is the land where Senator John Humphrey chose to live and the building he chose to build filled with things he chose to have. This site expresses who he was. It is as close as we can get physically to the man, who died nearly a century ago. Records and artifacts in the house and elsewhere can lead us to what his life may mean allegorically, morally, even mystically, to all of us. This marker and this site lead us to learn more about Humphrey, whose life was archetypically American, migrating from the Old World to the New, taming the wilderness, moving west in an adventurous quest for prosperity, building a community and rising through the ranks of leadership. He was born in England in 1838, during the decade when Queen Victoria began her long reign and the land we are on today was the U.S. frontier. He experienced the westward rush for gold, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era. He died in Chicago four months before World War I began. Through the decades, he became known as an honest, fair-dealing man, who cared about his family, region, and state. He led a significant fight in our State to preserve a balance between two great forces in American history: agrarianism and urbanism. After our American Founders won their long struggle for independence from an Old World empire, they differed on which was the better way of life in what Thomas Jefferson called an "empire for liberty." This dream of a new democratic civilization west of the first thirteen states would take form in the Northwest Territory, which in time was divided into five Midwestern states, including Illinois. Jefferson preferred agrarianism to foster citizens' independence by preserving their natural resources and a self-reliant way of life directly depending on them. Small towns with plenty of space and green around them and within them, like we see in this neighborhood today, were part of his agrarian vision. Humphrey knew this world firsthand in the country towns of Orland Township, Orland Park and their neighboring suburbs. Alexander Hamilton preferred urbanism to promote citizens' progress and prosperity. That would mean encouraging manufacturing, labor and trade. Cities filled with burgeoning buildings and bustling streets were part of his urban vision. Humphrey knew this world firsthand in the City of Chicago. Words taken from Illinois' state song evoke these different worlds. First, the agrarian world of nature and country towns is celebrated in the first stanza: By thy rivers gently flowing, Then the urban world of the city is celebrated in the second stanza: From a wilderness of prairies, Locally, Humphrey pioneered in the gradual, prudent development of the land celebrated in these words. He fought the explosive expansion and corruption of Chicago with its potential devastation of nature and rural communal life as a threat to this region's country towns. In State government, he became 22 |ILLINOIS HERITAGE
the advocate of suburbia—the arena where their distinct approaches to life could cooperate or compete. In the General Assembly, Humphrey could preserve and advance what was best about the suburbs. He could balance the urban and agrarian forces. Representing the suburban buffer zone between Chicago and downstate, he could reconcile and bridge these regions' clashing interests. This working out of great national movements leads to the relevance of the opening of the last stanza to Humphrey's significance:
Not without thy wondrous story, We are blessed today that not only the Ellis and their colleagues in promoting historical awareness are here, but Humphrey's successors in two governments he served: Daniel McLaughlin, Orland Park's Village President, and M. Maggie Grotty the Illinois General Assembly's Senator from this district. Nearly a century after Humphrey died, they still need, as he did, to exert suburban leadership in regional and state government, to balance agrarian and urban ways of life, to promote progress and control sprawl. Hopefully, historical awareness will continue to guide them and their successors in leading this community and state. Today we celebrate not only Senator Humphrey but historical awareness itself. This marker is a window to it. Those who read it should know and care more about story. Since they are all living in history, this marker and site should lead them to experience, to reflect, and to act out of a broader, deeper, historical consciousness. Markers and sites like this, at their best, can help visitors become more enlightened responsible citizens and inwardly richer, outwardly more effective, human beings. The Illinois State Historical Society has developed hundreds of such sites in a hundred counties around Illinois. Each year during our markers awareness week, the Society, the Illinois General Assembly, and the Governor join in calling attention to the importance of marking our history this way. Next year, our Society plans to transfer to leaders of the General Assembly a recently discovered photo collage of Representatives in the Illinois House from John Humphrey's era. Their images are from 1879—the year before he first joined them. Even if he was not present the year the photos were taken, it is easy to imagine him there among his colleagues in the pose and attire of the time. Images of him then, like the words on this marker, take on greater meaning the more we know of the life behind them. The Illinois State Historical Society Board of Directors, President John Weck, and Executive Director William Furry are honored to sponsor this important marker. ILLINOIS HERITAGE| 23 |
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