An exhibit about Oak Lawn’s first residents brought back some fond memories for Deloris Schultz and her niece, Jenelle Schultz-Lowe, when they saw their family name and relatives among people featured.
The Schultzes, German farmers and some of the town’s first residents in 1900, settled near Cook and 95th Street, setting up a family store, delicatessen and tavern. A neatly arranged collage of photos depicting the family and their home and businesses is among the picture histories at the Founding Families of Oak Lawn exhibit at the Oak Lawn Public Library.
“It was interesting, and just to see our family name,” said Schultz-Lowe, who has lived in the village her entire life. “Both of my parents grew up here.”
Her aunt also grew up in Oak Lawn, but relocated to Lake Forest, California for her job. She still calls Oak Lawn home and comes back often. When she saw a blurb about the exhibit on Facebook, she sent a message to her niece saying they had to go.
“My grandfather, Robert Bale, was with the Columbus Manor Fire Department,” she said, referring to the volunteer fire department that merged with the Oak Lawn Fire Department in 1968. “My dad, Melvin Schultz, was on the volunteer fire department as well.”
The exhibit timeline includes the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Civil War and development into the 20th century. There are pictures of prominent families like the Schultzes, unknown residents including farmers, a land development brochure and early real estate information, period clothing and farm and household items.
There’s also a listing of historic sites, such as the library, McCord House, churches and the Village Hall, jail and courthouse.
Many of the first immigrants were German and others Irish, said librarian Tom Javorcic, who curated the exhibit. But Javorcic said their immigration was part of a larger picture, which he tried to show in the exhibit.
“I wanted to give them an overview of what was happening in the 1800s worldwide, in America and regionally in Chicago,” said Javorcic, who spent about a year putting the exhibit together. “Having that context, I thought, would help people understand why all these Germans and Irish came.”
Javorcic noted the German revolution and the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s.
“Both these incidents caused a lot of upheaval and caused hundreds of thousands to leave these countries,” he said.
But life here was not perfect, he said.
“We were pushing Native Americans off the land and 20 years away from the Civil War,” he said. “We had some issues of our own we were dealing with.”
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One was farming being replaced by manufacturing, he said.
Oak Lawn was settled in the 1850s, but surrounding river towns were formed 20 years before. The exhibit traces the 1800s through the early 1900s.
By the 1920s, real estate investment companies bought up homes to entice people to the area.
“That’s when the population really took off,” said Javorcic.
There’s a picture of a man and woman in period costume, which Javorcic purchased from a historical website. The Oak Lawn Community Library Foundation and the Friends of the Oak Lawn LIbrary provided funds to clothe mannequins and for exhibit panels.
“A lot of young women and teenagers are totally interested in what they wore,” Javorcic said.
He went on social media for some of the farming artifacts, going “out to the sticks” to purchase items that would have been common in Oak Lawn.
“I wanted to make it an interesting exhibit,” he said. “This is the kind of stuff they were using in the 1800s … carpenter’s tools, farm tools, granny booties.”
A fellow librarian loaned an Irish crocheted table cloth from 1892, which is draped over a mannequin and is a family heirloom.
Javorcic said his favorite part of installing the exhibit was learning about why people came here.
“Oak Lawn was really, really good farmland and it was so close to Chicago, so they could sell their crops and livestock in Chicago,” he said. The farmers and factory workers also had “the proximity to culture, entertainment and education.”
He noted the community eventually became affordable.
“Once we stole the land from the Indians and the U.S. government broke up the land and sold it to the wealthy, they sold it to investors and that’s how it became affordable for a family to buy.”
Javorcic said he hoped children would learn from the exhibit.
“I especially want high school and grade school kids to get a sense of history,” he said.
Janice Neumann is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.