HS Board

Does MPHS have photographs: Yes

Address in Mount Prospect: 411 S. I-Oka

Birth Date: Unknown

Death Date: Unknown

Marriage
Date: Unknown

Spouse: Hester Pendelton

Children: David and Thomas

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments

Maurice Pendelton was the Mayor of Mount Prospect through the start of the huge post war boom in suburban construction. When he came into office World War II was just coming to an end. From there he watched as development in the area went from a slow trickle to tidal wave. Professionally, Pendelton worked as a publisher. He owned his own publishing business in Chicago, which specialized in printing lumber and wood working trade journals. He took this experience and used it to print the Prospector, Mount Prospect’s first newspaper.

Does MPHS have photographs: Assorted Images

Address in Mount Prospect:

Birth Date: October 25, 1901

Death Date: May 1963

Marriage: No

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments

Rev. Thomas O’Brien was the founding priest for Saint Raymond’s Church. He was ordained in 1932 at Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary. He spent seven years as an assistant at Saint Thomas the Apostle parish in Chicago and then ten years as the Chaplain at Saint Theresa Hospital in Waukegan. In 1949 he was assigned to Saint Raymond’s and sent to organize the congregation and build the church facilities. This was the first Catholic Church in Mount Prospect, and once it had a priest, it grew very rapidly. It was first started in the late 1940s when the Catholic Women’s Club began working to bring a Catholic parish to the community. After years of work, in 1949 Father O’Brien arrived and gave the first mass in the basement of the Central School. The parish grew quickly and opened the doors to its eight room school in 1954. The school was so popular by the end of the decade that they had to have two schedules for the students, one that came in the morning and one that came in the afternoon. The school has been significantly enlarged and continues to be popular in the community.

 

Does MPHS have photographs: Yes

Address in Mount Prospect:

Birth Date: Circ 1908

Death Date: April 2000

Marriage: No

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments

Thela Nipper was better known as “Idyl” the nickname her father gave her after reading a book titled Idyl the Girl Miner. Her nickname forecasted her industrious life. Idly started her own business in the 1940s in Chicago and sold it just before moving to Mount Prospect. She then worked a number of different jobs, eventually retiring from Scott, Foresman Publishing. However, Idyl Nipper is best known for the work she did as a volunteer. She made a career out of volunteering and certainly left her mark on the community. She first showed her flair for organizing groups while in high school in Chicago, where she started a girl’s riffle club. In Mount Prospect she is probably best known for her work with the Mount Prospect Public Library. She was the president of the board for the Friends of the Public Library and worked hard to raise money for the institution. In acknowledgement of her work, the main public meeting room at the Library is named for her. She also worked to raise money for the Maryville Academy and other schools in the area. Because of her successful fundraising, the Nipper School at Maryville in Des Plaines is named for her. She was the volunteer coordinator for the Wheeling Township’s Republican Party organization and worked with individual political candidates.

Does MPHS have photographs: Yes

Address in Mount Prospect: 306 S. Emerson Street

Birth Date: February 23, 1875

Death Date: March 7, 1963

Marriage
Date: Unknown

Spouse: Bertha

Children: Arnold, Clara, Leona, and Walter

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments

In 1924 the village of Mount Prospect hired William Mulso as the first Police Chief in Mount Prospect. He replaced a magistrate as the head of law enforcement in the community. He was, in fact a one man police and public works department. When he took the job, there were no paved roads and a population was less than 500. The town developed quickly in the 1920s and in 1932 he hired George Whittenberg, as a second police officer, in part because Whittenberg was able to ride a motorcycle. The two, with the help of a portable jail cell, known as the Blaha after its first occupant, kept order in the community.

 

Does MPHS have photographs: No

Address in Mount Prospect: 17 S. Owen

Birth Date: September 15, 1898

Death Date: December 20, 1974

Marriage
Date: Unknown

Spouse: Walter A. Mueller

Children: Walter, Victor, Marion, Evelyn, Bernice

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments:

Caroline, or Lena, Mueller was the daughter of George Busse, one of the major developers in Mount Prospect. She married Walter Mueller, who was George Busse’s hired hand when they met. Lena Mueller went on to be involved in many local organizations. She was the Vice President of Saint Paul Lutheran Church Ladies Aid, and a member of Saint Paul Lutheran Church’s Historical Society. She was also the Hospitality Chairman for the Mount Prospect Historical Society. She was famous for her love of baking and the Historical Society has her recipes for white bread and coffee cake on file.

Does MPHS have photographs: Yes

Address in Mount Prospect: 110 S. Elm Street

Birth Date: October 8, 1887

Death Date:

Marriage
Date: November 5, 1913

Spouse: Sophie Busse

Children: George, Paula and Jack

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments:

Rev. J. E. A. Mueller was the first Pastor for Saint Paul Lutheran Church. He was educated for six years at Concordia College in Milwaukee and three years at Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis. In 1910 he became a circuit riding preacher in the Dakotas, although he was not satisfied with the work. Meanwhile, downtown Mount Prospect was developing. In the early 1900s and 1910s more and more people began moving into the area that had been originally developed by Ezra Eggleston. During these early years there was no church directly in downtown Mount Prospect and this was hard on the residents. Saint John Lutheran Church, the first congregation in the community, was located on Linnemann Road, a little over a mile from downtown. This could be a long walk, especially in the winter, so in 1912 a group of local leaders got together to organize a new church in the center of Mount Prospect. After receiving a charter from the state, Saint Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church was founded. William and Edward Busse donated land for the church and everyone began looking for a Pastor for the new congregation. Henry Haberkamp, a founding member of Saint Paul, eventually found one. He was in the wholesale dairy business and one day he was talking to one of his clients about the hard time they were having locating a pastor. This man told Haberkamp that the minister of his church had a son who was a minister and was in North Dakota freezing to death. Haberkamp looked into it and soon they were able bring J.E.A. Mueller, Jr. to the warmer climate of Mount Prospect as the first Pastor of Saint Paul. He arrived in Mount Prospect on New Years Day, 1913 and got to work immediately. There was still a lot of work to do on te church. They were still installing seats and putting together the finishing touches the night before the first sermon. On January 19 Mueller gave the first sermon at Saint Paul in the midst of a blizzard.

Mueller served not only as the first Pastor, but was also the first school teacher. A few months after giving the first sermon in Saint Paul he also began the first class in Saint Paul School. The original class had sixteen members, but it quickly grew. After a few years of working as both the Pastor and the School Teacher, Mueller got a full time School teacher to come and take over. He remained the Pastor of Saint Paul until 1957.

Does MPHS have photographs: Assorted images

Address in Mount Prospect: 1025 S. Na-Wa-Ta

Birth Date: July 9, 1914

Death Date: April 17, 1984

Marriage
Date: September 2, 1938

Spouse: June Violet (Matthes) Muckle

Children: Gary James and Ellen June

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments:

James Muckle was a practicing ordained Presbyterian Minister for 43 years. During his career, he preformed 873 christenings, 397 funerals, 314 marriages, and 209 confirmations. He was also involved in a number of community organizations, including: The Kiwanis Club, The Lions Club, the AARP, The Masonic Order, and the Mount Prospect Historical Society. In 1982 he was given an Elderhonor award to recognize all of his work in the community.

Does MPHS have photographs:

Address in Mount Prospect:

Birth Date: 4/05/190

Death Date: 1/22/1998

Marriage
Date:

Spouse: Alfred Moellenkamp (b. 1904 d. 1988)

 Children:

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments:

Meta Moellenkamp was born in Mount Prospect. Her mother was born on a farm on Mount Prospect Road while her father was born in Mecklenburg, Germany. She married Alfred who lived in a house she passed every day walking to school.

Growing up on a farm, she had a lot of work. She got up every day at 6:00 in the morning and milked 5 or 6 cows and then ate breakfast. She had to walk two and a half miles to school everyday and never was given a ride. She walked along Mount Prospect Road to Golf Road and then down Linneman to the red brick Saint John Lutheran School. On the way home, she would cut through the farm fields. When she got home she would have to milk the cows again and held care for the chickens, pigs, ducks and geese that her family kept. They raised potatoes to sell and sold the milk from the cows, but most of what they raised was for their own consumption. They raised wheat, corn and oats to make flour and hay and corn to feed the animals. They raised other vegetables and fruits, which they canned for the winter, along with meat they canned themselves and ham that they smoked in their smoke house. They also made sausages at home and ate them on sandwiches for lunch. The family bought almost nothing, just things they couldn’t raise on the farm, like sugar, salt, coffee and spices.

She attended school from 1909 to 1917 and in that time had only one teacher, Paul Meeske. There were about 17 kids in her grade and about 80 in the whole school, so the teacher didn’t have a lot of time to spend with each student. Because of this, if students had a problem, the teacher would direct old students to help the younger ones out. The teacher kept a whit and strap at his desk to maintain order. No food and no gum were allowed in the class room. Students all brought their own lunches and ate outside, in the basement, or in the cloak rooms, while Mr. Meeske went home for lunch and left the students alone for a half hour. The students played outside for recess or in the basement. There was no running water in the school. A pail of water was kept at the back of the room to drink and there was one cup for the whole school. At the end of the year they had a big school picnic with a band and ice cream and cracker jack and games.

Oral History

Date of Interview: Unknown

Interviewer: Dorothy Halvoersen

Text of Oral History Interview:

DOROTHY HALVORSEN: Hello, my name is Dorothy Halvorsen, and I am doing an oral history report. I am doing this with Meta Moellenkamp who lives at 255 W. Miller Road, and I am her niece. I have known her all my life, and she is going to tell me things that occurred with her in school, which was St. John’s Lutheran School on Linneman Road, from 1909 to 1917. At that time it was Elk Grove. It was not Mount Prospect at the time, but since then, of course, it has been annexed for many years. She started in first grade, and she went all the way through eighth grade. There was one room, and there was one teacher in this room for all the years that she went. She says that there usually were approximately 17 kids in her class, give and take a couple every years, but usually they were the same. They started with her and they finished with her. When she was confirmed in eighth grade there were 27 of her class that were confirmed because the children came from the public schools. They would go for a confirmation class of two years, and then they would be confirmed in this school. Her teacher was Paul Maeske, all the eight years, with one teacher in the room. She says that her favorite subjects were arithmetic, geography. She liked everything –catechism songs, there is penmanship, history, and she liked arithmetic the best. She says there were lots that copied her answers because she was pretty good in that. She remembers that there was a desk with a bench, and there were two that sat on the bench together. The back of the bench was the front of the desk behind you. There was an inkwell. Each person had an inkwell, and, of course, if the children had long hair the boys behind would often like to stick the hair into the inkwell. She said she lived two-and-a-half miles away. She lived on Mt. Prospect Road. If you know where that is, near Thacker Street, and she had to walk all the way down Mt. Prospect Road to Golf Road and then over to Linneman Road. She did this by herself, she said, all eight years. She walked every single day, regardless of the weather. Sometimes when she was on Golf Road a family named Holste would call her in and she would get warmed up there. When she went home she went across the fields, she said. There was like a little dividing area between some farms, like a hardened road — Miller Road was not there at the time –and she would walk home that way. School started at nine o’clock and ended at three thirty. She got up at six o’clock in the morning because she had to milk five or six cows. She always had breakfast. Her mom or older sister made breakfast. They had pancakes and bacon or oatmeal. Those were the only two things that they had. Winter and summer it was always the same. There were no dry cereal boxes at that time. She would take a lunch along with her. Her parents always made her a sandwich. There was either summer sausage or jelly, and she always had a piece of cake with it. The bread was always homemade white bread. There was no fruit. They just never brought any fruit. They would have the fruit that they raised in the summer, and that would be it. Everybody ate lunch at school, and they could not eat in the classrooms. They would have to walk back by the cloakroom, in the basement, or outside, depending on the weather –all except the teachers, and, would you believe, the teacher went home to eat for half an hour and he left all the students by themselves. The school started with the Lord’s Prayer first, and then they would sing from a hymnal, and then they had a religion class and a catechism class. They had to memorize many, many things. You had to memorize parts of the catechism, the hymns and all the Bible stories, and then they would take turns going into the front, walking up to the front, and relating the different stories. She says that she does not remember the Pledge of Allegiance until later in school, perhaps in the seventh or eighth grade. There was a lot of memorizing. They wrote on the blackboard, they wrote on tablets of paper. She always had homework. She had to do the memorizing at home. And they had books. She had her own geography book, history book, catechism, and the Bible history book. There was a piano in the room, and they sang songs, but she says only religious songs. It would only be later, in the seventh and eighth grade, that she remembers singing anything at all patriotic. Can you imagine being in a room with eighty-two students and one teacher, and how would this be? The teacher would call the older students to help, she says, and that worked real well. She says that if somebody had difficulty they would raise their hand –it would go up in the problem — they he would call another child and say, “Come on over there, and you help that child.” There was a school bell that rang at nine o’clock, and when recess was over they would be called back by the school bell. Recess in the morning was about fifteen minutes. There was a big thing about no gum chewing, no eating in the school room and, like I said before, they ate lunch in the cloakroom. There also was no running water, and there was a pail of water that was back of the classroom by the cloakroom, and when the pail ran out somebody would walk down the road –on Linneman Road there was a well there –and get it filled. They all drank from the same cup. She always wore dresses, and mostly all, of course, were homemade. She says she changed them twice a week. She would start off, probably, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday wearing the same thing, Thursday, Friday, change the dress. They always wore long stockings and high-top shoes with buttons. She said some kids seemed to wear the same clothes all winter long. The teacher always wore a suit. At play or recess the girls played a baseball game called “Penny Over Hand,” and the boys had a baseball field for themselves where they would play. They also played jacks-and-ball. They played with a pocketknife where two kids would sit facing two other children together, and they would flip it over and it would have to hit into the ground. In the winter they played in the basement. She remembers playing hide-and-go-seek. Of course, there was no playground equipment at the time. Like I said, the teacher went home at lunch time for half and hour, and he left all these children by themselves. She said she never remembers anyone getting hurt or in trouble during that time. The teacher had a whip and a strap. We hate to say things like this, but at that time it did. He used it very infrequently, but she says she remembers it being used a couple of times. And, she said, boys, not girls. If you were tardy –and I remember, I went to school there. I was the next generation, and it was under his desk and he would say something about a strap. I never saw it being used, but I knew it was there. If you were tardy you had to stand by the door until the teacher said to go sit down. There were no arts and crafts or things like that. It was strictly reading, writing and arithmetic. Now, she liked him. She said he was always very good to her. He was very strict, and he kept good order. Her favorite things were the Christmas program on Christmas Eve. When she was in first grade she said she sang a solo, and the second year she and Irvin Busse sang a duet together. Then later she sang with a group, all the time, but she was always one of the singers. Then during the program they would sing songs and sing the Christmas songs, and then they had memorized several parts of the Bible, the nativity, and then they would read that. At the end they would get a bag that had apples and nuts in it. She always went to church in a horse and buggy. They went to church every Sunday. The women sat on one side and the men on the other. The women, of course, always wore a hat. Now, like I said, they always took the horse and buggy to church, but never did she ever get a ride to school. At the end of the school year was a school picnic, and that was a lot of fun. There was a band that played. They could buy ice cream, pop and Cracker Jack for a nickel. They had a flag drill that the kids would wave flags in, and they would march around. They also played a game with a fishing well. There was a blanket on the corner of the building, and then a man would hold a fishing rod and you would give him your nickel, or whatever, and then somebody would attach some toy to the [hook]. That was lots of fun. We played this, too. My next generation also played this. And then there were games played in the lawn that they didn’t play in school, like London Bridge and simple things like that.

After school she had more chores. She had to milk the cows again –cows have got to be milked in the morning and in the evening –and they had chicken, pigs, ducks and geese, and they all had to be fed and watered, and they had to carry the water to the animals from a pump that was in the middle of the yard. They raised potatoes, and that was the only thing that they did sell. The other things that they raised were corn, oats and wheat, and those were all used, really, by them and by the animals. They used their own wheat to make their own flour. Every day they had eight cans of milk, and her father would take this to the Mt. Prospect creamery or the Des Plaines creamery. Their free time after school was visiting. She says almost every Sunday they would have company. Relatives came from Chicago most of the time, and her mother always had cakes and something for them to eat. The children mainly played by swinging. They had a swing in the trees, and there were plenty of neighbors. She said she had lots of friends that came over. There was a Erleking family nearby that had a number of children. They also had roasts for their Sunday meals, and he sister made excellent pies and she would make a jelly roll that was very popular. They never bought anything canned. They even canned their own meat. They would can the meat in jars. They also had a smokehouse, and they smoked their own hams. They also made sausages, and these sausages were kept in a cool place. She said they couldn’t be frozen, but that’s what they would have for lunch meat. The only thing she remembers buying at a store were things like staples –sugar, coffee, spices, salt and probably oatmeal –but everything else they had at home, and they always had plenty to eat. She does not remember any graduation ceremonies after the school year. Also, she doesn’t remember any high school being around here nor any of her classmates going to high school. The big occasion was confirmation. That was always on Palm Sunday, and the girls would always wear a very pretty white dress. The pictures were taken of them –a formal picture taken –that they would give to all of their relatives later. That was a big time in their life, and the boys, of course, wore a suit. The confirmation classes were held in back of the church, and the minister taught them for the last two years. Since I mentioned they had no running water they also did not have bathrooms in the school. They had an outhouse outside, and the boys’ was on one side of the school and the girls’ was on the other side of the school. They also spoke German. They had the fible, which they learned from there, and they spoke together in German many times, and English. So through those eight years they learned both English and German. I want to just give you some additional biographical information. Her name was Meta Moeller before she was married. Her mother’s name was Dorothea Mueller, and her mother was born on the farm on Mt. Prospect Road, also. [Dorothea’s] husband’s name was Christian Moeller, and he was born in Mecklenburg, Germany. Meta married Alfred Moellenkamp who lived on Golf Road –she passed the house every day when she went to school –and they bought the property on Miller Road. They resided on Miller Road, where she is still living, all their married lives. They farmed that area. Now it is all built up with homes, but all their married life they did farming. I thank Meta Moellenkamp for offering to be interviewed.