From the earliest days of Lake County’s history, there are connections to the Revolutionary War, historians said. From the burial of two of the war’s veterans here to how Libertyville got its name, the war for independence has made a lasting mark.
“Lake County didn’t have a role (in the Revolutionary War), but people who came to settle here did,” said Diana Dretske, a local historian and curator of the Lake County Discovery Museum.
Though Illinois became a state in 1818, Lake County was not open to settlement until the 1830s, following treaties with Native American tribes, she said. Therefore, when settlers came to the area now known as Libertyville, they were not only pioneers on the frontier, they were also among the very earliest to celebrate the Fourth of July.
“The first civic celebration was held July 4, 1836, in a cleared area near the Vardin Cabin,” according to a book, “Historical Libertyville-Mundelein” from 1835, produced by its historical society. “The settlers gathered to erect a flagpole in honor of the 60th birthday of the United States and they voted to call their town Independence Grove in place of the now inaccurate Vardin’s Grove.”
The site of that celebration is in the area of the current Cook Memorial Public Library, 413 N. Milwaukee Ave., according to Jenny Barry, a local history librarian.
Calling it a liberty pole, locals must have viewed it as something of great importance, Dretske said. Thought the settlers likely were not soldiers themselves, they would have known people who were, or been related to them in direct ways, she said.
It was unusual for that period to have a permanent structure, she said. Settlers would have had a town pump, church, school, and possibly businesses. Yet, the pole preceded the school, which was not built until later that fall, the historical book said.
“You don’t hear a lot about statues or things like that at this period,” Dretske said. “It’s the first documented one I could find.”
Though settlers had voted for the name Independence Grove, it did not stick because another town had been granted that name for a post office.
Though only about a dozen people attended the 1836 Independence Day celebration in what came to be known as Libertyville, it was eight years later that the party really got started in Lake County.
In 1844, about 100 people attended a July 4 event at the confluence of Second and Third lakes in what is now the Village of Third Lake, Dretske said. Calling it “really full blown,” they read aloud the Declaration of Independence, gave speeches and had a picnic, she said.
The event had an anti-slavery tone, with the some of the first African-American settlers in attendance, and a prayer for the freedom of slaves in the South, according to Dretske’s blog, called the “Great Anniversary Festival.”
There are also two Revolutionary War veterans buried in Lake County, designated by the Daughters of the American Revolution, Dretske said.
Henry Collins marched on Springfield, Mass., when he was 16 years old. Following the war, he moved to Lake County with his son, Joseph Collins, and settled in Newport Township along Edwards Road east of Hunt Club Road, Dretske said.
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He became the first burial at Newport Township’s Mount Rest Cemetery, following his death on April 10, 1847. In 1964, the American Legion Post of Gurnee added a new marker to his grave, she said.
The other Revolutionary War veteran, Reuben Hill of Connecticut, enlisted three times since the age of 15, and was discharged as a private in 1783, Dretske’s blog said.
He likely moved to Wauconda Township when his son purchased land there in 1840, the blog said. He died at age 93, and is buried in Wauconda Cemetery.
Erin Gallagher is a freelance reporter for the Lake County News-Sun.