Institution

The Meeting House was built on land donated by town founder, Joseph Naper. It was moved from Van Buren Street to Naper Settlement in 1971. The meetinghouse is the oldest church in Dupage County. Houses of worship were vital centers of community life for many Naperville settlers. Germans founded the Zion Evangelical church. The lives of the Naperville congregations members revolved around their church. It hosted a library and a school on the weekdays, and a religious service on Sundays. The congregations opened the church's doors to preachers from other religious groups and to the community as a meeting house.

In Ashtabula, Ohio, where Naper lived before moving to Illinois, religious revivals were commonplace—as they were all over the new country. The consensus was that religion was good for democracy. Although not an evangelical himself, Naper, being a man of his time, donated the land in 1841 for the construction of this church—the first to be built in DuPage County. The Germans who built Zion Evangelical Church were pioneers from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and immigrants fleeing the 1848 failed revolution in Germany. Although it housed a German speaking congregation, the building, in the spirit of 19th century evangelicalism, was open to preachers from other denominations and used as a community meetinghouse. Originally standing on Van Buren Street, this building was moved to Naper Settlement in 1971.

Meeting House

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<h2>Museum Overview</h2>Naper Settlement is an award-winning, outdoor history museum offering visitors 13 acres of educational programs, exhibits, guided tours, and special events. Whether watching the blacksmith at the forge or sitting down for a lesson in our one-room schoolhouse, visitors are immersed in history as they learn about the past and how it relates to the present in our 34 historic structures. The museum features several interactive exhibits including the newly reimagined Building Naperville: Tallgrass Prairie to Today which engages visitors with local stories and artifacts from the town’s past and connects them to our nation's history. <h2>Establishment</h2>Established in 1969, Naper Settlement, through a management agreement with the City of Naperville, operates under the direction and governance of the Naperville Heritage Society, whose mission is to “document, preserve and interpret the community life of Naperville, Illinois, including, but not limited to the social, political and business history."<h2>Caroline Martin Mitchell's Gift to Naperville</h2>Caroline Martin Mitchell lived her life with conviction and was determined to make a difference in the community. As the last surviving heir to the Martin family, upon her death in 1936, Caroline bequeathed her home and land to the City of Naperville through a perpetual charitable trust. She ensured that her land would be an ever-evolving legacy to the Martin family by securing her home as a museum, her orchards as a place to gather her community, and by dedicating the remaining acreage to the public good. Today, Caroline’s vision is still being realized, and her 212 acres play a central role in shaping Naperville. Her home and orchards are now Naper Settlement, a 13-acre, nationally accredited outdoor history museum that connects visitors to the past while inspiring them to see their role in the community’s future – just as Caroline did nearly a century ago. Through award-winning exhibits, events, and educational programs, the museum fulfills its vision of a permanent, public institution that celebrates Naperville’s proud history and its promising future. Caroline’s remaining land has shaped Naperville into a thriving epicenter of growth and progress with a variety of community assets including Naperville Central High School, Rotary Hill, Knoch Park, the Naperville Garden Plots, Von Oven Scout Reservation, Sportsman’s Park, Edwards Hospital, Naperville Cemetery, and more.To learn more about Caroline Martin Mitchell's gift, visitors can tour her family's home at Naper Settlement.<h2>Original Buildings</h2>Naper Settlement is located on 13 acres that were originally part of the George Martin estate. There were pine trees original to the site; hence, the mansion and grounds were originally called "Pine Craig." The site's two original buildings are an 1883 mansion and a carriage house, which underwent a complete restoration from 2000-2003. All other historic buildings were moved to the museum campus from various locations throughout Naperville and Illinois. <h2>Future Plans</h2>Through the vision of Naperville residents such as Caroline Martin Mitchell and the Naperville Heritage Society, Naper Settlement has continued to thrive and grow. Through the museum's Never Settle Capital Campaign, Naper Settlement has brought new learning opportunities to its visitors through the Birck Family Innovation Gateway, Mary and Richard Benck Family Agriculture Center, and the Herman &amp; Anna Hageman Memorial Thresher Hall.

<h2>Welcome to Naper Settlement.</h2><h3>Where looking back is looking forward.</h3>Naper Settlement is an award-winning, outdoor history museum offering visitors 13 acres of educational programs, exhibits, guided tours, and special events. Whether watching the blacksmith at the forge or sitting down for a lesson in our one-room schoolhouse, visitors are immersed in history as they learn about the past and how it relates to the present. Explore our interactive exhibits including the newly reimagined Building Naperville: Tallgrass Prairie to Today. On view through December 2024, celebrate the Naperville Fire Department’s 150th anniversary with a look back at the department’s history in a thought-provoking new exhibit, A Strong Back and A Strong Mind.

Built at a time of innovation and advancements in technology, Pinecraig showcases several of these features throughout the home. Between 1890 and 1920, Naperville residents began receiving services such as water, sewage, and electricity, many of which can be seen throughout Pinecraig. Upon entering the mansion, guests would immediately see an electric-powered chandelier. While the lightbulb might look dim to our eyes, this was bright in comparison to a kerosene or candlelight lamp used in the 1800s. For the first time, people could have light shine down and illuminate what was beneath the light source. With this being such a new amenity, wall outlets were not yet invented. In order for a desk lamp to work, the lamp must be wired through a lightbulb socket on a lowered chandelier, much like the one you can see in the outer office. Unlike most American households who added indoor plumbing to their homes in the 1920s and 1930s, the Martins had this in their home from day one. Using their own wells and cisterns, the Martins could bring water into the house. A boiler and wood burning stove could heat up water for various uses; however, water temperatures would range between lukewarm and cold. In the first few decades of its history, the Martins heated Pinecraig using coal burning fireplaces in six rooms as well as portable stoves. As time went on, the family was able to put in radiators throughout to better heat their home. First invented in 1855 by Franz San Galli of Russia, radiators heat up water, which creates steam in the radiator. This heats up the metal which heats the surrounding area via radiation and convection. While Pinecraig features many new music and entertainment technologies of the time, one that truly stands above the rest can be found underneath the staircase, the telephone. The first telephone company came to Naperville between 1883-1885 as the telephone’s popularity exploded. The Martin family was one of the first local families to have a telephone for business reasons. They shared their line with five other telephones in town. Early telephones used party lines, which meant you could not make a call if someone on the line was already on the phone, people in different locations could listen in, and each phone had a personalized ringtone.

Both immigrants from Scotland, George Martin III and his wife Sibelia met in Naperville, married in the 1850s, and had four children together. Operating a limestone quarry business, Martin saw a boom following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Almost a decade after the business boom, George Martin began constructing his three-story brick house in 1883. The new house was situated on the rural edge of downtown Naperville. Surrounded by 212 acres, this new structure stood like a castle, overseeing farmland and Martin’s rock quarry pits, which had also furnished many of the foundations upon which the town’s buildings rest. Martin hired Joseph A. Mulvey from Aurora to design a house that celebrated his success as a businessman. The mansion shows a variety of popular Victorian architectural styles. When used together, they are commonly referred to as Victorian Eclectic style. The Italianate style is the most dominant on the exterior façade of the mansion. This style was inspired by Italian villas and was popular in the United States from the 1860s through the 1880s. Other popular Victorian architecture features on the house include the porch’s overall High Victorian Gothic appearance, similar to the Century Memorial Chapel at Naper Settlement. The roofline is a Second Empire style, best characterized by a mimicked mansard roof, or a four-sided roof with two slopes, with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper. In honor of their Scottish heritage, the Martins named their estate Pinecraig. After his father died when he was fifteen, George Martin not only tended to the family farm, but also expanded his family’s land to include a quarry on the DuPage River. In the 1850s, Martin had developed a commercial quarry that was advertising lime and building stone in the local paper. Following the Chicago Fire in 1871, stone and gravel were at a premium. By 1872 Martin, along with partner Ernst von Oven, had developed another business, the Naperville Tile and Brick Works. The timing was perfect. The Martins themselves represented a typical Victorian success story. While most Naperville residents still ate in the kitchen, Martin, his wife, and their three daughters, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Caroline, could leave behind the dynamite blasts and dust of the quarry for fine, formal meals in a dining room. Their house featured new technologies of the day as well, such as electricity, the telephone, and indoor plumbing. George Martin died five years after the completion of his house, leaving his businesses to his daughters. The estate was eventually left to his youngest daughter Caroline, who deeded it to the city of Naperville as a museum and park in 1936. Pinecraig and its carriage house are the only buildings on Naper Settlement grounds that are currently standing in their original location.

Martin- Mitchell Mansion

Although the cannon blasts and gunshots of Civil War battles were not heard in Naperville, the war weighed heavy on the hearts of its citizens when this church was built on the corner of Ellsworth and Jefferson in 1864. 365 young men from Naperville volunteered during the war; some of those young men did not live to see home again. During difficult periods such as the Civil War, local churches served to renew faith when Naperville residents were consumed with fear. However, along with devastation, the war also brought prosperity to agricultural towns like Naperville. Demand for grain and livestock was high. Business was good—so good that the congregation of St. John’s Episcopal Church could finally afford to build their own church, rather than making do with space borrowed from neighboring churches as they had for the previous 25 years. Consecrated in 1865, only days after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Chapel served as a place of worship and community for the congregation of St. John’s for over one hundred years. The Century Memorial Chapel continues to be a cherished gathering place for residents with dozens of couples choosing to hold their wedding in the Chapel each year.

Built in 1864 during the Civil War, the Century Memorial Chapel served the congregation of St. John’s Evangelical Church until the 1960s. The Century Memorial Chapel is designed in the Prairie Gothic style popular in Illinois at the time. Fashionable architects in the Northeastern states popularized the Gothic Revival style in the U.S., and it quickly found favor among American builders between 1840 and 1870. In rural areas like Naperville, timber was more accessible than stone, the typical material for many classical Gothic structures. Carpenters applied the same styles and principles of Gothic revival architecture that were typically done on stone to wood. Builders encouraged churchgoers to look up to the heavens by adding details that draw one’s eye upward. The vertical siding of the Chapel brings your eye up to the pointed windows and the steep pitch of the roof. The windows are shaped like a pointed arch, also called a lancet, with some even extending into the gables of the roof. While Civil War battles were not heard in Naperville, the war weighed heavy on the hearts of its citizens when this church was built in 1864. 365 young men from Naperville volunteered during the war; some of those young men did not live to see home again. However, along with devastation, the war also brought prosperity to agricultural towns like Naperville. Demand for grain and livestock was high. Business was good—so good that the congregation of St. John’s Episcopal Church could finally afford to build their own church. Consecrated in 1865, only days after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Chapel served as a place of worship and community for the congregation of St. John’s. When the building was scheduled to be demolished in 1969 to make way for a new professional building, a group of Naperville residents organized a group to “save the chapel” and succeeded, resulting in the creation of the Naperville Heritage Society and the chapel’s move to Naper Settlement in 1970. The Century Memorial Chapel continues to be a cherished gathering place for residents with dozens of couples choosing to hold their wedding in the Chapel each year.

Century Memorial Chapel

With most houses not getting indoor plumbing until the 1930s, families had to rely on outhouses and chamber pots. Some stories tell of gendered outhouses, with a star or sun cutout for men and a moon cutout for women. However, there is not much evidence to support these claims. To cover the inevitable smells, families would plant numerous lilac bushes around the outhouses. These lilac bushes could grow to twelve feet tall.The Murray Building is another example of Greek Revival architecture at Naper Settlement that pre-dates the Daniels House. Early settlers living in log cabins wanted to build homes with siding as soon as possible in order to have their homes appear more “civilized.” Many settlers in Naperville had come from the East Coast and wanted to imitate the styles of their former New England villages. However, these homes typically had no insulation and were very cold in winter compared to their log counterparts. The Murray House features a narrow line of transom and sidelight windows around the entry door and no entryway porch. The gabled roof with a low pitch and a wide, divided band of trim emphasizes the cornice lines.

“Let each state mind its own business and let its neighbors alone! If we will stand by that principle, then Mr. Lincoln will find that the Republic can exist forever divided into free and slave states.” Ideas such as this, expressed by Democrat Stephen Douglas to a crowd in Quincy, Illinois while campaigning for state Senate, were quite likely a topic of conversation around the table of this house owned by Robert Murray. Murray, a friend of Douglas’s and an avid supporter of states’ rights, was already actively involved in Illinois politics when he built his house on Main Street in 1842. It was here that Douglas stayed after he delivered a campaign speech at Naperville’s New York Hotel, another of Murray’s enterprises, in 1856. Public service was an early calling for Murray, who at age sixteen swam ashore from Captain Naper’s schooner that carried the first settlers. Within a year he had joined the Illinois Mounted Volunteers to defend the settlers during the Black Hawk War. He spent the next two decades in a variety of occupations, including constable, sheriff and student of law, before being admitted to the bar in 1851. Around town he was known simply as “Judge,” an endearing as well as professional title for a man respected in town for his fairness

Murray House

By the 1840s, a community called Copenhagen Corners had developed south of Naper’s Settlement. To serve the growing community, townspeople built a clapboard schoolhouse. Copenhagen School’s enrollment varied, ranging from as many as 22 pupils and to as few as 4.1. In the 1800s, attending school at a one room schoolhouse was quite the privilege, it meant you could leave the farm during the week to get an education. At school, the focus was on the “three R’s”: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Grades 1-8 would learn arithmetic, or math, and solve problems on their chalkboards. If the teacher knew other subjects like science, geography, history, music, or even hygiene, they could teach these subjects to the students. The knowledge learned at school could help students in future jobs, like blacksmithing or printing, or even back at the farm.

By the 1840s, a community called Copenhagen Corners had developed south of Naper’s Settlement.To serve the growing community, townspeople built a clapboard schoolhouse. The one-room schoolhouse at Naper Settlement is a reconstruction of the Copenhagen Corners clapboard schoolhouse, originally located on what would become the intersection of Route 59 and 83rd Street. Since the builders were local farmers who knew very little about constructing anything grander than a simple wood frame structure, they relied on other schoolhouses in the area as architectural inspiration. This schoolhouse is made of lumber, but in areas of the Midwest where trees were scarce, sod was often used to build schools and homes. Some of the original materials were salvaged—you can even still see the graffiti carved into the siding in a few places. Lester Peet, the first schoolmaster in Naperville, was paid twelve dollars a month. The Copenhagen School was a subscription school, meaning each subscriber agreed to “pay his proportionable part of the teacher’s wages, according to the number of scholars that he subscribes for or send.” Copenhagen School’s enrollment varied, ranging from as many as 22 pupils and to as few as four. First grade through eighth grade students were taught at the same time in this one-room schoolhouse and learned reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, civil government, and science, among other subjects. Like other rural schools in Naperville, the academic calendar of Copenhagen School revolved around planting and harvesting times when children were needed at home to help with farm work. For many students, this was the only education they would receive. Today, Naperville students attend over 30 schools in two different school districts.

School House

In the late 1800s, many doctors and patients turned to patent medicines cure illnesses. The latter half of the nineteenth century is often termed the “Golden Age of Patent Medicines.” Patent medicines were often mass-produced and did not require a prescription to purchase. In the absence of pharmaceutical regulations, these patent medicines were primarily compound made of plant extract mixed with as alcohol, opium, or cocaine and promised to cure everything from tuberculosis to stomach and liver ailments. In addition to treating patients in his home, Dr. Daniels also developed his own medicines, including remedies for fever, asthma, and skin concerns. After his death, Dr. Daniels’s sons published fifty of his medical recipes. The catalog preface reassures patients of the scientific validity of Dr. Daniels’s recipes, explaining, “It is a recognized fact that in well-defined ailments, the remedies prescribed by practitioners of the same school of medicine are practically alike, repeated tests having proven their potency, making them specific remedies and the healing art a positive science.”

Hamilton Daniels grew up in Naper’s Settlement and built his white-pillared house across the river on Washington Street in 1852, a few years before he attended Rush Medical College in Chicago. For 40 years, Dr. Daniels worked as a family practitioner, bringing babies into the world and treating their ailments, along with those of their elders, with his special line of patent medicines. At the time Dr. Daniels practiced, the approach thought to be most scientific promoted bloodletting, purging, vomiting, and blistering. For obvious reasons, this approach was not popular with patients. Another option was surgery, but prior to the Civil War, whiskey was the leading anesthetic, and infection seemed inevitable; this method was also unpopular. After his death, Dr. Daniels' sons published a catalogue of his medicines, legitimizing the scientific basis of the prescriptions, at a time when medical practitioners were scrutinizing patent medicines in favor of regulated treatments. In the catalog preface, they wrote, “It is a recognized fact that in well-defined ailments, the remedies prescribed by practitioners of the same school of medicine are practically alike, repeated tests having proven their potency, making them specific remedies and the healing art a positive science.” In 1974, Dr. Daniels’ House arrived here at Naper Settlement.

Daniels House

Urbane Stanley moved from Vermont to Naperville in 1837, where he lived as a farmer. His land not only provided rich red clay soil to grow crops, but Stanley also used the clay to make the red, sunbaked bricks used to build this house, later nicknamed the “Halfway House”, in 1843. Although the home exhibits some elements of Greek Revival architecture, the architecture of the Halfway House is more commonly associated with folk architecture. Unlike other architectural styles that came and went, folk homes provided shelter with little regard to changing fashions. Homeowners typically built these homes themselves using materials found close to their site, sometimes with the help of local craftsmen. Families passed folk building traditions down through generations, resulting in little variation of the style. Its similarity in design to other buildings at Naper Settlement suggests that Naperville’s early residents possibly shared building traditions with each other. Originally standing halfway between Naper’s Settlement and Aurora, 12 miles west, the house soon became a familiar landmark dubbed the “Halfway House” by a young traveler, Helena Zentmyer, as she often passed between the two towns. The location of the house on the main thoroughfare also made it a resting spot, a place to get a drink of water before the next leg of the trip. Recognizing the building’s rich history, Helena Zentmyer purchased the home and donated it to the Settlement. The Halfway House was relocated to Naper Settlement in 1975.All the early settlers needed to grow their own food in order to survive. Without proper food preservation, the food they spent so much time and effort growing would be lost or even worse, make a person deathly ill. Most farms had a smokehouse—a masonry structure similar to this one, where a fire could be built on the dirt floor and kept smoldering for up to two weeks. The smoke would slowly cook the meat and infuse it with flavor. This smokehouse came from Max Gartner’s farm in south Naperville, where it had been in use for a hundred years. The walls are double thick brick, which support a limestone slab ceiling most likely hauled from one of the local quarries. Cellars, like the one on the northwest side of the Halfway House, were the ideal place to store the harvested food like fruits and vegetables, along with dairy products and preserved meat. The underground location provided insulation, keeping food cool in summer and preventing it from freezing in the winter. The milk house behind Halfway House dates to the early 1900s and was used to store milk prior to transportation to a creamery. Although this milk house was located adjacent to a barn, earlier milk houses were typically located on top of a creek or river to keep the milk cool. Naperville had many dairy farms in late 19th and early 20th centuries with cows outnumbering people for several decades. The Milk House comes from the Maple Knoll Dairy Farm which was originally owned by the Bauer Family and bounded by Ogden Avenue, Washington Street, and I-88. The Milk House moved to Naper Settlement in 2019.To make getting water a little easier on the farm, windmills could be hooked up to water well pumps. Rather than a person spending hours pumping the lever up and down to get water, the windmill could do the work instead. As the windmill blades spun, it would cause a vertical bar to move up and down. This bar could attach to the pump and act as the lever, providing a consistent stream of water into a barrel, trough, or other storage tank.

The Stanley family built this farmhouse in 1843. All the early settlers needed to grow their own food in order to survive. Without proper food preservation, the food they spent so much time and effort growing would be lost or even worse, make a person deathly ill. Most farms had a smokehouse—a masonry structure similar to the one you’ll find behind the Halfway House, where a fire could be built on the dirt floor and kept smoldering for up to two weeks. The smoke would slowly cook the meat and infuse it with flavor. Also behind the Halfway House, there is a milk house. Milk houses were used to store milk before transportation to a creamery in the early 20th century. While this milk house was built adjacent to a barn, earlier milk houses were built on top of a creek or a river to keep milk cool. In the 1800s and early 1900s, Naperville was a dairy town, with cows outnumbering people for several decades. The Halfway House also had a root cellar. Cellars, like the one you’ll find on the northwest side, were the ideal place to store the harvested food like fruits and vegetables, along with dairy products and preserved meat. The underground location provided insulation, keeping food cool in summer and preventing it from freezing in the winter. Helena Zentmyer Wackerlin gave it the nickname "Halfway House," based on her childhood memory of the house as the halfway point of the two-hour carriage ride between her family's home in Naperville and her grandparents' home in Aurora. The Halfway House was moved to Naper Settlement in 1975 from its original location on Aurora Avenue, west of Route 59, near the Fox Valley mall.

Halfway House

Most of Naperville's early settlers were farmers. Farmers transformed the open prairie into acres of corn, wheat, oats, and pastureland for livestock. Early Naperville farms produced the food that settlers needed to survive. As the community grew, farmers cultivated crops and livestock they could sell in commercial markets. Naperville soon had some of the most productive farms in Dupage County.Farmer John Haight bout this small board and batten house in the 1860's from the family of John Naper, the brother of Naperville Founder Joseph Naper. Haight may have used it as an outbuilding for storage or as a housing for farm laborers. He specialized in raising livestock.

When Joseph Naper arrived in Illinois in July 1831, it was too late in the season to plant wheat to get him through his first winter. He planted buckwheat instead, which by autumn was a bountiful field that attracted prairie chickens who had never tasted the likes of such a grain. Over the years, his farm thrived and required farm labor to break new ground, seed, harvest, and mend fences. This simple house was built on Naper’s property on the east bank of the DuPage River in the 1850s and is believed to originally be the home of a farm laborer and his family. The building was moved to Naper Settlement in 1983.

Naper- Haight

Found across the country, log homes provided settlers the ability to quickly build a temporary shelter in order to get started on planting crops or other work immediately. Using construction techniques from Northern and Eastern Europe, settlers passed this style down throughout generations and across communities. In order to build a sturdy home, settlers had to have a strong base knowledge of their environment and engineering. Trees had to be sturdy, rot resistant, and large enough to build a livable space. Before stacking, the logs might be stripped of bark or hewed, meaning cut to have flat sides. To stack them, people could use different techniques to connect the logs to one another such as saddle notching, steeple notching, step and lock notching, and corner posts. No heavy machines were around to put the logs into place, they had to be placed by hand, one by one. In between each log would be chinking and daubing. Chinking is wood or stone slabs with moss or clay. Daubing is the outer layer that looks like dried mortar and consists of sand, clay, and a lime mixture. You can see this chinking and daubing on the log house here at Naper Settlement. Using this engineering knowledge, settlers were able to build sturdy homes in a few days.

In 1831, Captain Joseph Naper, a former captain on the Great Lakes, led a party of 50 to 60 settlers from Ashtabula, Ohio, to a parcel of lush prairieland along the DuPage River, land that would become known as Naper’s Settlement. These first settlers lived in crowded log homes like this one. Swedish and Finnish colonists who settled the Delaware Valley in Pennsylvania brought the style to America in the 1630s. Settlers built log homes of readily available natural materials like wood, stone, and mud. To build a log home of this size (18 feet by 16 feet), a settler would need to cut down seventy to eighty logs of equal size. Log homes could be built of logs that were either hewn, cut and shaped, or unhewn, left whole. After cutting, builders made notches at the ends of the logs. Notches held logs in place and eliminated the need for nails or pegs. Builders filled the gaps between logs with clay or mud. This process, known as chinking, weatherproofed the exterior walls. Many settlers built their log cabins with holes in the roof to vent smoke, greased paper windows, and a dirt floor. A settler might turn his log cabin into a log house by adding a hinged door, glass windows, a plank floor, and a fireplace with a chimney. The finished product was a log home any early settler could be proud of. Log homes were never intended to be permanent structures. Settlers would live in the simple log home for only a few years until they built a larger frame house like those they lived in back East. Living quarters were tight in log cabins, with settler households averaging six people. Life inside the log home revolved around the fireplace, which was the main source of heat, light, and fuel for cooking. No day passed when the fireplace went unused—even in the summertime. Life in a log house was hard work and little play. Every member of a frontier household, including children, was responsible for daily chores essential to the family’s survival. Men and older boys cleared and cultivated fields, chopped firewood, and tended livestock. Women were responsible for cooking, cleaning, sewing, laundering, and related tasks. Children carried water, gathered fallen branches for kindling, and minded their younger siblings. The log house at Naper Settlement is the only building on the museum grounds which is not originally from this area. This log house was brought to Naper Settlement in 1978 from Jonesboro, Illinois.

Log House

Operating a successful post office in Naper’s Settlement meant being familiar with transportation and having strong mathematical skills. To get mail from point A to point B, Postmaster Alexander Howard relied on stagecoaches to transport the mail and the occasional passenger. A horn would announce the approaching stage, giving Mr. Howard time to prepare for the quick transfer of mail on and off the stage. For those traveling by stagecoach, they must figure out how expensive their trip might cost. On average, it cost five cents per mile traveled, so a trip to Fort Dearborn/Chicago would cost $1.25. Once it came time for mail collection, Mr. Howard’s math skills would come into greater use. On the prairie, the most common currency used was the Spanish silver dollar, or specie. Coins similar to the ones we used today existed but had not yet spread into the west. Similar to paying per mile on the stagecoach, mail costs would depend on the distance it traveled. A one-page letter from Naper’s Settlement to Aurora, IL cost a picayune, or 6 ¼ cents, a letter from Naper’s Settlement to Chicago cost a bit, or 12 ½ cents, and a letter sent over 400 miles cost 25 cents. To get these small denominations, the postmaster would have tin shears that could cut through the silver dollar. The postmaster could cut the pieces into four types of change by cutting each piece in half. Cutting the dollar in half created two 50 cent pieces. Cutting the two 50 cents in half created four quarters. Cutting the four quarters in half created 8 bits, or pieces of eight, worth 12 ½ cents a-piece. Cutting the eight bits in half created 16 picayunes worth 6 ¼ cents a-piece. Postmasters had to have strong and quick math skills to best serve their customers and ensure the post office operated efficiently.

Built in 1833, the Paw Paw Post Office was one of the first frame buildings in Naper’s Settlement. Serving as both a family home and mercantile business, Alexander Howard, a carpenter by trade, was named postmaster in 1836. With this new position, the Howard home became the post office and stagecoach stop, which in turn attracted more customers to his mercantile business. Mail in the mid-1800s came by wagon, stagecoach, and even steamboats. In Naper’s Settlement, the sounding of the post horn announced the approaching delivery. Upon hearing the horn, residents would gather by the paw paw trees surrounding the Howard house to read and listen to letters. This structure experienced two additions, one in the 1860s and one later in the 19th century, to make the Howard’s original home into the structure visitors see today. The Howard family house came to Naper Settlement in 1977 from its original location at Webster Street and Jefferson Avenue.

Paw Paw Post Office

The Joe Naper Pumper is a great example of using engineering to create a useful machine. When a fire broke out, firemen hauled the pumper to the site of a fire and placed the intake hose into a nearby water source. A hand pumper, like the Joe Naper, is operated by pumping a set of long bars, or brakes, up and down. By pushing the brakes up and down, a set of pistons inside of the fire engine pull water out of the water storage compartment and moves it to a pressure chamber. This pressure chamber regulates the amount of water that sprays out of the outtake hose, blasting 250 gallons of water a minute at a fire.

For the first few decades of its existence, Naperville fought fires by passing buckets hand-to-hand from a water source to the fire. It was not until Naperville residents could see the glow of flames from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, just 28 miles away, that they decided to invest in a hand-pumper. They named the newly purchased pumper the “Little Joe Naper.” A Hook and Ladder Company, composed of a fire marshal and volunteers, was formed to operate the pumper. When the fire bell rang, the volunteers rushed to the firehouse, which was often just a shed or garage large enough to store the pumper. There, they harnessed the ropes on the side of the pumper to their shoulders and hauled it to the fire. The intake hose was hooked up to any nearby water source, perhaps a cistern, stream, or well. The outtake hose, pressurized from the hand pumping of the firemen, blasted out 250 gallons of water a minute—smothering flames with a force that no human chain of buckets passed hand-to-hand could match. The “Little Joe Naper” was used until 1916 and came to Naper Settlement in the 1970s.

Fire House

A walk through the Naperville Cemetery, located on the corner of Hillside Road and Washington Street, will reveal the beautiful and intricate artistry of local stone carvers who worked in shops like this one, opened by Henry Miller in 1884. Built on a bed of limestone, Naperville had no shortage of the material. Three limestone quarries produced thousands of tons of stone, supplying durable material for building construction and jobs for skilled craftsmen like Miller, who learned his trade in Germany before immigrating to America. Carvers worked freehand or used a pattern to create intricately carved headstones, monuments, fireplace mantels, cornerstones, and signs. Originally located on Main Street, the building became local favorite Andy’s Popcorn Stand before it was moved to Naper Settlement in 1969.

German immigrant Henry Miller opened his stone carving business in this building in 1884. Naperville limestone quarries provided local stone carvers like Miller, who transformed it into intricately carved mantelpieces and gravestones. Originally located on Main Street, the building became local favorite Andy's popcorn stand before it was moved to Naper Settlement in 1969.

Stone Carvers

Before an apprenticeship in the print shop can even begin, a prospective apprentice must pass several exams, including mathematics. As a printer, math is vital to ensure spacing is correct and the content fits into the chase, or frames, that will be inked and pressed. Prior to the electric age, many printing presses relied on levers and were operated manually. For example, the Chandler and Price Job Press used a foot pedal lever to turn a wheel which pressed mounted paper to the ink plate. Smaller projects, like tickets, letterheads, handbills, and calling cards were made on hand presses. As technology improved, a larger, steam-operated Babcock Press was introduced to print shops. Located outside the shop, an engine would be steadily fed coal to heat a boiler of water and create steam which builds in pressure to push a piston. Each time the piston moves, a wheel and axle in the shop would spin and allow the Babcock press to start working. As more print shops could expand to steam-powered and electricity-powered presses, the rate of production and speed at which news could be delivered dramatically increased.

In 1849, the town was growing as Joe Naper had planned—churches and schools were springing up, business was booming, and settlers cultivated successful farms. As the town developed, Naperville residents sought to encourage the growing business and cultural interests by creating a local newspaper. They bought presses from the Chicago Journal, turned a shed into a print shop, and furnished it with inks, paper, and type; and searched for a publisher, eventually settling on C.J. Sellon. In December 1849, Sellon began publishing Naperville’s first paper, the DuPage County Recorder. Unfortunately, Sellon was a man who could easily be bought. Politicians paid him to turn the Recorder into a partisan paper called the Democratic Plaindealer, but after just a few issues, Sellon took the paper’s funds and left town. The DuPage County Recorder was only the first of several early Naperville papers to fail. During the 1850s and 1860s, a succession of local newspapers quickly folded until, in 1867, David Givler, a long-time resident of Naperville, purchased the DuPage County Press. Under his direction it became a reputable paper called the Naperville Clarion. David Givler published the Naperville Clarion from 1867 to 1905. Like many small-town publishers, Givler served as both editor, reporter, and master printer for his weekly paper., Upon his death, the paper passed to his son, Rollo N. Givler. The Naperville Clarion continued to publish local news until it was discontinued in the 1970s. This print shop was originally a garage, built in 1929, but was transformed into a print shop when it was moved to Naper Settlement in 1981.

Print Shop

While in the blacksmith shop, you will see science, technology, and mathematics in action. To get the day started, the blacksmith must use a pulley system to get the bellows moving air into the forge, which starts and stokes the fire throughout the day. Once the fire reaches a glowing orange/yellow, work can begin. When the iron is placed into the fire it will start to change colors. Deep red is around 1200 degrees Fahrenheit, yellow or orange is around 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and a bright white is around 2800 degrees Fahrenheit and iron’s melting point. Iron in the forge heats up via conduction, which means heat is passed along from the hotter end to the colder end as molecules vibrate. Once the iron reaches 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, the work can begin. Using the tools around the shop, the blacksmith passes his energy through the tool to shape the iron. Every time the iron must be reheated, the bellows pulley system is used to bring the temperature of the forge back up. To cut the iron into smaller shapes, it is placed onto a wedge and struck with a hammer in order to easily bend and snap off. Along with the basic hardware blacksmiths create, they might also make horseshoes and rings to fit onto wagon wheels. In order to make these products, the blacksmith must have proper measurements to ensure the horse or other form of transportation can properly function with the new iron fittings.

In the 1800s, no wagon train or growing town was without a blacksmith, and Naper’s Settlement was no exception. A blacksmith was the jack of all trades, the “father of craftsmen,” with the knowledge to forge iron, a black metal, to make hardware we take for granted today. It was in shops like this recreation where the blacksmith and farmer invented tools to speed up production, free up labor, assist in housework, and even help soldiers. Immigrants arriving from Europe could find work if they were smiths. In 1833, George Martin’s father sent a letter to his family back in Scotland, saying, “No person need come here if they cannot work—or bring work people with them…. Paid a Smith two dollars for putting four shoes on a horse…. Immigrants from east and Europe could find work if they knew how to smith.” It’s no coincidence that early steel plows, like those made at the Naperville Plow Works, were often the inventions of smiths. John Deere was himself a smith from Western Illinois. By the end of the nineteenth century, industry had advanced to the point that tools were being manufactured in factories and sold in hardware stores. However, this development did not mean the end of business for blacksmiths. Resourceful as ever, smiths became even more specialized, making mechanical repairs and continuing to shoe horses. The blacksmith shop here at Naper Settlement is a recreation of an 1880s Naperville shop owned by John Frederick Strohecker.

Blacksmith Shop

Built by George Laird in 1834, the Pre-Emption House was one of the first hotels built west of Chicago. Travelers journeying west from Chicago by wagon or stagecoach would spend the better part of a day rattling over 28 miles of rutted roads before arriving in Naper's Settlement. Guests included traveling merchants, politicians, entertainers, and horse traders. For only 35 cents, guests received a bed, breakfast, and a drink, as well as feed and stables for their horses. The Pre-Emption House had nineteen bedrooms, an office, kitchen, dining room, sitting room, maid's room, and large sample room. Not only did the Pre-Emption House serve as a hotel during its long history, but it also acted as a gathering place to conduct business. Before the construction of the first DuPage County courthouse in Naperville in 1839, the Pre-Emption House hosted official government business. Beginning in the late 1800s, Monthly Horse Market days in front of the hotel drew farmers and dealers from all over to haggle and show off their horses. This is represented by the statue outside of the current Pre-Emption House. As one settler put it, the Pre-Emption House was “the biggest thing between Chicago and the Mississippi.” The original structure, which stood on Main Street and Chicago Avenue, was demolished in 1946. You are now standing in a recreated Pre-Emption House, opened to the public in 1997.

Built west of Chicago, the Pre-Emption House was named after the Pre-Emption Act. The Pre-Emption Act of 1834 allowed settlers to purchase the land they were squatting on for just $1.25 an acre if they had improved that land with a home and crops the previous year. The original structure, which stood on Main Street and Chicago Avenue, was demolished in 1946. You are now standing in a recreated Pre-Emption House, opened to the public in 1997. This reconstruction of the Pre-Emption House is a perfect example of early balloon frame construction. Carpenters used long 2x4 studs for exterior walls that extend continuously from foundation to roof. This new technique made buildings lighter, cheaper, and faster to construct than previous framing methods. The balloon frame method gets its name from its critics, who declared that its long thin studs were as flimsy as a balloon on a windy day. The Pre-Emption House had nineteen bedrooms, an office, kitchen, dining room, sitting room, maid's room, and large sample room. For only 35 cents a night, guests received a bed, breakfast, and a drink, as well as feed and stables for their horses. Not only did the Pre-Emption House serve as a hotel during its long history, but it also acted as a gathering place to conduct business. Before the construction of the first DuPage County courthouse in Naperville in 1839, the Pre-Emption House hosted official government business. Beginning in the late 1800s, Monthly Horse Market days in front of the hotel drew farmers and dealers from all over to haggle and show off their horses. This is represented by the statue outside of the current Pre-Emption House. As one settler put it, the Pre-Emption House was “the biggest thing between Chicago and the Mississippi.”

Naper Settlement

Meeting House

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context