Did you know Abe Lincoln gave an impromptu speech on a front porch at Ridge and Church in Evanston?
How about the Underground Railroad coursing through the North Shore to a safe house? And then providing transport to refuge via a lumber ship owned by the mayor of Lake Forest?
Or a World War II-era camp for German prisoners of war across the road from what is now Glenview Hackney’s?
And many more stories.
The Winnetka Historical Society’s “Surprising Stories of the North Shore” exhibit extends the affluent area’s historical narrative far beyond the nationally-prominent politicians, business titans, entertainers and sports figures who have lived here.
The exhibit opens Jan. 6, at both the Winnetka Library, 768 Oak Street, Winnetka, and the Winnetka Community House at 620 Lincoln Avenue. The 12 panels in the exhibit will be evenly split between them, and the locations will be swapped halfway through. It will run through the end of April.
The exhibit originally opened at the North Shore Senior Center in Northfield this past fall.
There, Megan McChesney, curator of the 97-year-old historical society, helmed a presentation about several of the more interesting stories.
Perhaps the story that surprised both curators and exhibit visitors was the existence of a POW camp in what was then a more rural part of the area.
“Camp Skokie Valley” was established for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), an early New Deal agency meant to give work to the mass unemployed of the Great Depression in 1933. CCC built national parks and other public works projects throughout the country, with the Skokie Lagoons the main project for Camp Skokie Valley residents.
But after the CCC ended with World War II, the camp became available to house an overflow of German POWs from Ft. Sheridan. By June 1945, some 400 POWs were interned at the camp. They were put to work salvaging gas mask parts and packaging for re-use. The POW camp was closed in September 1945.
Lincoln’s visit to Evanston was detailed on one of the panels. After taking care of business in Chicago on April 5, 1860, he hopped a train to then-unincorporated Evanston to visit prominent citizen Julius White. Honest Abe was taken on a carriage ride around the community of 1,200 people. Returning to White’s home, residents beckoned Lincoln to give a speech from the front porch. He would soon receive the Republican presidential nomination in Chicago.
Until Lincoln’s election and the start of the Civil War, Underground Railroad operatives in the North had to carefully hide enslaved people who had escaped from the South, due to the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850. The Railroad secretly spirited the enslaved people to safety. One route led to Lake County, with the nearby Lake Michigan the final route to assured refuge in Canada.
McChesney detailed how one escapee, Andrew Jackson, came to the home of Lyman and Clarrissa Wilmot, then a winter-long hideout at the house of tailor Lorenz Ott in Deerfield. Eventually Jackson departed the area on a lumber ship — which transported other escapees –owned by Lake Forest Mayor Sylvester Lind.
The story of Nuremberg war crime trials attorney Roger Barrett also was relayed to the audience. Barrett was a U.S. Army intelligence officer recruited by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the lead prosecutor, to his staff. Barrett talked to top Nazi defendant Hermann Goering, whom he described as a charming storyteller – but also “completely amoral.”
The staff and board of the historical society figure a traveling exhibit such as this will boost interest in their permanent exhibits, which are regularly open only limited hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 411 Linden St., Winnetka. The society also operates the Schmidt-Burnham Log House, built in 1837 at what is now 1140 Willow Road.
The traveling exhibit is not just limited to Winnetka timelines. Staff and board members wanted to include the entire North Shore since the communities are so interconnected.
“It’s easily transportable,” said historical society president Carrie Hoza. “People here just don’t stay tied to Winnetka. The staff worked with other (area) historical societies.”
Wilmette, Glencoe, Lake Forest and Kenilworth historical organizations were given credit in the presentation.
The exhibit got prime exposure at the senior center. Tish Rudnicki, center executive director, said some “300 to 400” people pass through the exhibit area daily.
Hoza said exhibit was designed to be available beyond next summer for display by surrounding community historical organizations.
Not all the fascinating material the historical society possesses can be converted to traveling exhibits. At the 411 Linden building is a re-creation of the office of famed Winnetka village engineer Frank Windes, a co-founder of the society whose most famous project was the lowering of the then-Northwestern railroad tracks through the village and the building of overpasses over the right of way.
The exhibit was funded by top historical society benefactor Dr. Scholl Foundation.
Next on the agenda is a documentary in conjunction with filmmaker John Newcombe, a former Winnetka resident, on the history of the Schmidt-Burnham Log House. The home, built the same year Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, was the longest-occupied house in northern Illinois until the daughter of Anita Willets-Burnham gifted the structure to the historical society in 2001.
The traveling exhibit could also boost revenue to the nonprofit historical society, which in 2024 reported revenues of $353,000 and expenses of $316,000. In addition to the Dr. Scholl Foundation, top donors were Carol and Jim Hansen, Elizabeth Crown and Bill Wallace, Joan and Kevin Evanich, Helen and Paul Weaver, and Nan Greenough.
In conjunction with the exhibit, the library will be hosting a hybrid program, also called “Surprising Stories of the North Shore” on Feb. 17 at 4 p.m.