On Sept. 25, Sue Kennedy Lohenry went to St. Patrick Church in Lake Forest where she met people with a shared family history.
“You’re looking around and thinking, am I related to any of these people?” Lohenry said. “It’s – I don’t want to say eerie – but a different feeling to look around the church and see all these people have descended from the original settlers here.”
This summer, St. Patrick completed restoration work on its 19 stained glass windows. To celebrate, the descendants of the church members who donated the windows in 1910 were invited to see the completed work.
Those church members were among the original families that settled in areas that eventually became part of Lake Forest, said Laurie Stein, curator at the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society.
Lohenry, 80, is the great-granddaughter of Michael Yore, who traveled to the U.S. from County Meath, Ireland in 1826, Lohenry said.
“(Michael Yore) worked the Erie Canal originally,” Lohenry said. “Then he worked in salt mines. People traveled the Erie Canal and would come to Illinois. Then they’d come back and say the land is fertile.”
Yore decided to move to the Midwest in 1838, according to Tim Klunder, communications director at St. Patrick Church. Klunder’s research on the history of the church and the its stained glass windows was recently posted on the church website.
“They meant to go to Milwaukee but a storm blew their ship off course and they anchored in (what later became) Lake Forest,” Klunder said. “He and his family settled near what is now Everett School.”
Yore was deeded 160 acres near what is now the west Metra train station on Telegraph Road. A missionary circuit rider, Father John Guegnin, began holding Catholic services on Sundays in Yore’s home.
In 1840, two ships collided near the shoreline of Lake Michigan and dozens of Irish sailors died. Yore and another residents donated land for a cemetery along Telegraph Road to bury the sailors.
It was Yore’s grandson, Thomas, who paid for a stained glass window at St. Patrick Church. Thomas Yore also helped establish the Deerpath Golf Course.
Lohenry said she became interested in researching her genealogy about 20 years ago, a task that at times proved difficult.
“The son would marry the girl from the farm next door,” Lohenry said. “They had a tendency to name their kids the same names. Lots of Josephs and Daniels. It was the most difficult thing to sort out who belonged to who.”
Lohenry is also descended from the family of John Kennedy, another of Lake Forest’s original settlers. John had a son named Edward, a farmer born in 1859, who owned land along what became Kennedy Road. It was Edward who donated the Good Shepherd window and the St. Patrick window to the church.
Rocco Dawson is another descendant of an early Lake Forest family. His wife, Margaret, has been researching the family’s history for decades.
Originally from County Sligo, Ireland, Rocco Dawson’s great-grandfather Patrick Dawson made his way to the area in the 1840s, Margaret Dawson said. Patrick’s son Peter was born in 1844 and had 10 children with his wife Catherine Redmond Dawson.
“They all had a lot of kids back then,” Klunder said.
It was Peter Dawson who donated the Holy Family window at St. Patrick in honor of his wife who had died of scarlet fever, according to the research.
The early members of St. Patrick were tenacious. After the Sunday worshippers outgrew Yore’s home, they built a 40-by-30 foot log cabin near the cemetery. When they also outgrew that space, they chose a 2.5 acre site at Route 60 and Waukegan Road for a larger church building, which was constructed between 1853 and 1855 at a cost of $14,000, according to Klunder’s research. The church was originally called Corduroy Church – named after a wood bridge over the North Branch of the Chicago River – but by the 1860s was officially known as St. Patrick.
By 1883, the church had become unsafe and members tore it down and rebuilt. In 1895, the building was struck by lightning and destroyed by fire. It was once again rebuilt. In 1908, the building was again destroyed by lightning and fire.
This time, members decided to find a new location, according to Klunder’s research. They bought land from Thomas Yore, grandson of Michael Yore, at Everett and Waukegan roads. The church was built in 1909 and dedicated on Oct. 16, 1910. Members paid for the stained glass windows, which are believed to have been constructed by Detroit Stained Glass Works.
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The church led a fundraising campaign over the last year and raised more than $100,000 for their restoration.
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