Paseltiner - Glencoe

QUEEN OF SUBURBS

The Native Americans were here first; they walked softly and left arrowheads to remind us of their presence. They hunted the wild game in the heavily wooded ravines and fished in Lake Michigan and the Skokie marsh, but lived on the flatter lands to the west and south.

In 1835, when Chicago was barely two years old and had a population of less than 500, Anson Taylor, a young storekeeper, builder, and trader, came north along the lake shore. On a bluff overlooking the lake in the area of what is now southeast Glencoe, Taylor built a log cabin, establishing himself as Glencoes first white settler. He built a two-story frame building with a small store and post office that served as an inn for nearly half a century. The LaPier House welcomed stagecoaches traveling between Chicago and Green Bay, Wisconsin. The area was known as Taylorsport until the Civil War. Others moved to the area beginning in the late 1830s. Land became available for settlement after a treaty with Native Americans. These settlers, many of German and English origin, established farms and homesteads to the north and west of Taylorsport.

The nature and name of the settlement changed in the mid-1850s. Walter Gurnee, twice mayor of Chicago and president of the Chicago and Milwaukee Railroad, purchased a large stock farm in the area that belonged to his father-in-law, Matthew Coe. Gurnee moved into the house on the property, and when the railroad came through in 1855, a station was built opposite president Gurnees home. The future Village of Glencoe began to grow around this nucleus of the railroad station. The origin of the name Glencoe comes from this early time. Some hold that because of the villages ravines (glens) and in honor of his wifes maiden name, Coe, Gurnee named the village Coes Glen, or Glencoe. Others believe it was named for his ancestral home, Glencoe, Scotland. The original village seal and an early library bookplate both carried the emblem of the Scottish town.

The last major player who helped to mold the future of the village was Dr. Alexander Hammond, who bought Gurnees home and land in 1867. Hammond had a vision of a utopian village, as a map of the era called, Glencoe: Queen of Suburbs. He enlisted nine other men to form the Glencoe Company. Each member promised to help subsidize a community church, pay annually for a pastor, a school, and a teacher, and build one house for himself plus a second to sell in order to spur development. The foot of Park Avenue along the lakefront was set aside in perpetuity for use as a park. The Village was incorporated March 29, 1869.

Anson Taylor was an early resident of Chicago and a storekeeper, builder, and trader. He and his brother Charles built the first bridge across the Chicago River connecting the south bank with the Green Bay Trail leading north. In 1835, Taylor and his family made their way along Lake Michigan to a bluff and settled just north of the large ravines in southeast Glencoe, becoming the areas first white settler. The area became known as Taylorsport.

This old wooden sign hung outside early settler Anson Taylors establishment, LaPier House on the Green Bay Trail, welcoming travelers who were one night out from Chicago. The two-story frame building was located at what is now 185 Old Green Bay Road. The hospitable inn stood for nearly half a century, from the 1840s until the 1890s.