Besley Brewery of Waukegan

There has been a tradition of brewing in Lake County since 1851.

In that year, Antoni Schieb, George Brownwell and Fredrich Hangebrauch purchased an acre of land along the Plank Road (Belvidere Street) in Waukegan to start a brewery. Schieb's Brewery was in operation for one year, when it sold the land and improvements to Charles Scoffin of Racine, Wisconsin. At the time, Scoffin was a co-owner of the Gnadt and Green City Brewery of Racine. Like its predecessor, Waukegan's Scoffin and Green Brewery lasted only one year.

Portrait of William Besley (1808-1897) by J. Derome, circa 1887. Besley founded the Besley Brewing Company in Waukegan in 1853. Dunn Museum 62.3.8 

The run of bad luck ended when William Besley purchased the brewery. Besley (1808-1897) was born in Berkshire County, England where he learned the maltster's trade. He immigrated to Oakland County, Michigan in 1835, where he was a hotelier and worked as a maltster for a brewery.

In 1853, he came to Waukegan with the opportunity to purchase his own brewery. Besley enlarged the small, Scoffin and Green Brewery, and incorporated it as Besley's Waukegan Brewery. His sons would eventually join him in the business.

By the mid-1860s, the brewery's ales and porters had become so popular that more buildings were needed. Besley purchased land at Lake and Utica Streets along the Waukegan River, and contructed an ice house, malt mill, hop jack, storage cooler, barrel storage, cooper's building and main office.

Original location of the Besley Brewery, Belvidere Street, Waukegan. View circa 1880. Dunn Museum.

The original brewery on Belvidere Street was converted into a bottling house. Federal Law prohibited the brewing and bottling processes to be done in the same building. William Besley is shown in the photograph (above) in his carriage in front of the brewery on Belvidere Street. He was known for always having a white horse.

In addition to their porter and ales, the Brewery's yeast was popular with locals. Pails of yeast could be purchased for pennies at local stores to make buckwheat pancakes and baked goods.

Advertisement for Besley Brewery's "Good Yeast" available at Cory & Son's Store in Waukegan. Waukegan Weekly Gazette, December 15, 1855.  

Besley's Home Brew bottle from 1908. Dunn Museum 70.109.11. 

The thick plaster adhering to the bottle (above) suggests it was found inside a wall. This may be evidence of the long tradition of sealing beer bottles in the walls of new homes.

In 1871, the brewery opened an office in Chicago, indicating that the sale of Besley's brew reached beyond Lake County.

Besley Brewery on Lake and S. Utica Street, Waukegan, 1887. Dunn Museum.

A new brick brewery was constructed in 1887 at the Lake and Utica Streets site. When it was built, the building's construction date was on the facade, but later the date was changed to 1853 to reflect the year Besley began brewing in the city.

The brewery used water from Waukegan's springs, which it claimed contributed to the popular taste and gave the beverage curative properties. Local doctor, A.O. Wright wrote the brewery stating that "the nutritive qualities of the ale and porter... established for them a high place among the therapeutic agents of the day."

Besley Brewery advertisement, circa 1904. "Half & Half" was a mixture of porter and "beer" (lager). Poster of this ad is available for purchase through the Dunn Museum's Gift Shop. 

Besley also brewed beer. There is some evidence that the transition to brewing more beer occurred at the end of the 19th century with a change in immigration patterns. By the late 1800s, heavy industry along Waukegan's lakefront brought immigrants from Czechoslovakia, Italy and Germany, who preferred beer.

William Besley died in 1897. His health declined after slipping on the street and fracturing a hip. His sons continued managing the brewery after his death.

In 1905, Besley's grandson, Frank Besley, enrolled in the Seibel Institute of Technology in Chicago where he learned to use adjuncts in the brewery process. Previously, the brewery had prided itself on using the "choicest barley" and "best hops," but a shortage of barley in the 1880s forced brewers to adapt.

Page from Frank Besley's Seibel Institute notebook, 1905. Dunn Museum 62.8.39.

The brewery then made costly changes to remain competitive, but it was at the time when many Midwest towns were voting for temperance. Years before Prohibition went into effect in 1920, communities voted to go dry.

Photo postcard of William Lux (1889-1959), teamster for Besley Brewery with delivery wagon, circa 1906. Dunn Museum 2004.6.3

The Temperance Movement effected the distribution and sales of alcohol throughout the region. It forced brewers to bypass dry towns, making delivery more costly and complicated. 

About 1912, the Besleys sold the brewery to Thomas Snelling and other investors, who continued the operation. The real shock came in 1916, when pressure from temperance was just too much for the business. That spring Waukegan citizens, including women who had recently gotten the vote, voted for the town to go "dry." According to the Waukegan Daily Sun, the brewery could not operate "in a territory where it cannot sell its own product." Customers were shocked to read the headlines: "Besley Brewery is to Quit."

There would not be another brewery in Lake County until 1942 when the Zeman Brewing Company opened in Gilmer. It remained in business until 1964 when a tornado destroyed the building.

The county's first brewpub, Mickey Finn's, opened in Libertyville in 1993.

Black Hawk the Sauk Leader

As a kid in the 1970s, I loved watching Chicago Blackhawks' hockey. Those were the glory days of Bobby Hull, Stan Makita, and Tony Esposito. I was one of those crazy people jumping for joy this week when they won the Stanley Cup for the first time in 49 years.

The Chicago Blackhawks were founded in 1926 by coffee tycoon Major Frederic McLaughlin. He bought the Portland Rosebuds to build the core of his new team, but didn't like the name "Rose Buds."  McLaughlin turned to Illinois history and his own past for inspiration. In World War I, he served with the 333rd Machine Gun Battalion of the 86th Division of the U.S. Army. Members of this division called themselves Black Hawks in honor of the Sauk Native American chief. McLaughlin felt this name was more fitting for the National Hockey League.

Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (Black Sparrow Hawk) (1767 - 1838) was a recognized leader of a faction of the Sauk and Fox Indian tribes. 

In 1804, United States agents tricked Sauk and Mesquakie representatives into a treaty that signed away tribal lands east of the Mississippi River. The Native tribes continued to live on their traditional lands, but an influx of thousands of lead miners in the late 1820s crowded them out of their lands along the Rock River. 

A government order moved the Native tribes off their land into Wisconsin with the promise of government food supplies, which never materialized. Black Hawk defied the orders to vacate and led 1,2000 Sauk into Illinois to re-occupy their homeland and harvest their crops. This resulted in the Black Hawk War of 1831-1832.

Lithograph portrait of Black Hawk from A History of Indian Tribes of North America by Thomas L. McKenny and James Hall (1836-1844). 

Henry Blodgett (1821-1905) wrote of the Black Hawk War in his autobiography, published in 1906:

"Early in the spring [1832], and when the whole settlement was busy ploughing and preparing the ground for their crops, rumors began to come to us that Black Hawk and his band of Sacs and Foxes, who had been moved west of the Mississippi River… was coming back into Illinois, for the purpose of making war upon the settlements."

In 1831, the Blodgett Family left New York for a new settlement near today's Downer's Grove in Will County, Illinois. (right Henry Blodget in 1850)

With the threat of war looming, Blodgett recalled that one man came to the settlers' aid:

"On the night of the tenth of May, old Aptakisic, otherwise known as Half Day, chief of one of the bands of the Pottowotamies [sic], and whom we had seen a great deal of during the winter, as he had been often at our house, came about twelve o'clock at night and gave a whoop. Father sprang out and opened the door, and he at once began to tell father that he was to take his family and get away from there as soon as possible, that Black Hawk and the head men of his band had been at Waubansie's Village, which is the present site of the City of Aurora, in consultation with the Pottowotamie head men during the whole of the day before, endeavoring to influence the Pottowotamies to join him in the war, which he was determined on making against the white people."

The alarm went out to notify the "neighborhood" and by daylight all the settlers in the vicinity were "gathered and on the road to Chicago."

Blodgett continued:

"As we moved on, he [Half Day] moved on with us, not saying a word, simply following in our trail during the whole of the day. Our march, necessarily with ox teams, was a slow one... the old chief following us... until we were in sight of Ft. Dearborn, when he waved us good-bye with his hand, turned his horse, and disappeared."

Black Hawk was defeated by the U.S. Army and the Illinois militia, and many of his followers were killed. Though he did not achieve his goal, many Americans admired Black Hawk's courage in defending his people's ancestral lands, and he became a folk hero.

Aptakisic was one of the signers of the Treaty of Chicago (1833). The treaty was signed between the U.S. Government and the United Nation of Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians on September 26, 1833. Five million acres were sold to the United States including the last tracts of Native occupied Great Lakes’ land. 

(Image: Cover page of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago from the National Archives and Records Administration)

Several years later, the Village of Half Day (now Lincolnshire) was named in honor of Aptakisic, whose name can be translated as "sun at meridian" or half day.

Henry Blodgett eventually moved to Waukegan where he was an attorney and a judge, and in 1846 co-founded the Lake County Anti-Slavery Society.



Source: Autobiography of Henry W. Blodgett. Waukegan, Illinois, 1906.

1837 McHenry County Ledger

An important book was recently returned to its rightful home in McHenry. The 563-page ledger book holds the minutes of the McHenry County board from 1837 to 1848. It had been missing for years, and somehow ended up in a Sangamon County antique shop.

(Photo of McHenry ledger by Catalin Abagiu for the Northwest Herald).

The find is significant for Lake County as well. In 1836, McHenry County was created out of today's Lake and McHenry Counties. This super-sized county existed from 1836 to 1839, covering part of the period of the book. In March 1839, an Act of the Illinois Legislature separated Lake County from McHenry County.

The newly returned ledger includes the earliest known government records for Lake County, including the creation of roads, which had to be approved by the County Commissioners Court.

Though the Bess Bower Dunn Museum of Lake County is not a repository for Lake County government records, the museum does hold records for other organizations. These entities range from the 96th Illinois Regiment (1861-1865), school trustee boards (1841-1959), Waukegan fire department, general store customer ledgers, and the Royal Neighbors of America, to name a few.





Pages from the Ela Township school board ledger for 1861-1869.






Ledger book for Civil War enlisted, 1907. This book from the museum's collections, documents the enlistees name, regiment, and date deceased.

Among the museum's collections, Civil War records are one of the most frequently used by researchers.

Keeping records in ledger books was a common practice into the early-20th century. The book (above) lists the location of fire hydrants in the City of Waukegan for 1897.

The records in the museum's collections are often the only documentation remaining of an organization. Without them, there would be no primary evidence of their existence and function. The ledgers contain a wealth of information for genealogists and researchers, listing names, places, and events that would otherwise be forgotten.

For McHenry, and researchers of early Lake County history, the return of the McHenry County minute book is cause for celebration. McHenry County is digitizing the book and will be making it available online. Read more about the discovery of the McHenry County book and view a selection of scanned pages online.

Sousa and His Band Battalion

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932), the most famous bandleader ever known, was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Training base during World War I.

Sousa composed 136 military marches, including what is arguably the most famous march in the world, “The Stars and Stripes Forever" (1896).



In 1917, at the height of his career and in support of the war effort, Sousa assumed the musical directorship of the Great Lakes Band.















Sousa’s Band Battalion, as it was called, toured the world and raised over $21 million in war bonds. “The Naval Reserve March,” also known as “The Great Lakes March,” was written in 1918 during his tenure as the director of the Great Lakes Band.

Panorama of Sousa and his Great Lakes Band Battalion, circa 1918. Courtesy of the Great Lakes Naval Museum.

The popularity of Sousa’s music and the incredible musicianship of his band carried America’s growing national pride to the world. The Topeka Daily Capital noted in 1902 that, “All the way through a Sousa program, you can see the old flag waving, hear the clothes flapping on the line in the back yard and smell the pork and beans cooking in the kitchen.” In other words, Sousa’s music represented the heart and soul of America.

Curt Teich postcard, 1929 (5461-29)

In 1987, "The Stars and Stripes Forever" was declared the National March of the United States.

Dear Lizzie Schlager...

The museum's Lizzie Schlager Postcard Collection includes over 900 postcards collected between 1899 to 1912 by Lizzie Schlager.

Elise Walters Schlager Wandel (1878 - 1928) was known to her friends as Lizzie. She was born in Switzerland, and immigrated with her parents to Elgin in 1883. Lizzie married Will Schlager in 1899, and her postcard collecting began that same year. Will passed away in 1901 from pneumonia. Will and Lizzie, 1899.

Lizzie was collecting cards during the height of the postcard craze. The postcards were sent from European and U.S. destinations, including local towns such as Elgin, St. Charles, Chicago and Waukegan, and also include holiday postal cards. They were sent by family and friends, and some were purchased and went unused.



The messages on the postcards include "wish you were here" sentiments, gossip about office news, and one refers to the "dear old watch factory" (Elgin Watch Factory) where Lizzie worked before marrying Will.

In 1910, Lizzie moved to Waukegan where she lived with relations Fred and Edith Walsh Buck. Fred Buck was mayor of Waukegan from 1909 to 1911. Lizzie worked at the Bairstow Coal Company, and in 1912 married William Wandel, owner of a stationery company.

The Bairstows sent Lizzie cards when they traveled. George Bairstow in particular liked to have a bit of fun with Lizzie and would address the postal cards to Lizzie "Schlagerhammer" or in the case of the card pictured above Lizzie "Schlagerharferengen."

The postcards also reveal that Lizzie did a good deal of traveling, especially during her widowhood between 1901 and 1912. She went camping in Livingston, Montana, took a summer cottage at Fox Lake, and visited New York State. In 1909, she took a Thomas Cook & Sons European tour. A group of Lizzie's friends in downtown Waukegan, circa 1910.

The collection offers unique insight into the life of a young widowed woman at the turn of the 20th century. The messages on the back illustrate that her circle of friends and family were lively, clever, literate and well-traveled.

Sadly, in 1928, her automobile was struck by a train at the 22nd Street crossing in North Chicago.

Tuberculosis Sanitorium

My father lost both of his parents to tuberculosis in the 1930s. For thousands of years, the disease was known as consumption, and had no cure and no treatment. The classic symptoms are a chronic cough with blood-tinged sputum, fever, night sweats, and weight loss.

In the mid-19th century, the first institutions were built to care for sufferers. Intially, TB was treated by diet and fresh air at specialized hospitals. Even with these sanitoriums available throughout Europe, the disease continued to spread.

In the early 1900s, when Lake County doctor, W.H. Watterson contracted TB, he discovered that there were no facilities in the region to treat it. After his cure, Watterson—along with Dr. Elva A. Wright—organized the Lake County Tuberculosis Institute.

From 1909 - 1914, a sanitorium was located on 16 acres on Grand Avenue, east of Greenbay Road in Waukegan. "Lake Breeze Sanitorium" cared for 66 patients. Residents lived in cottages or tents and paid a monthly fee for housing and food. Stays at the facility could last years, but in many cases this treatment of fresh air and a good diet was ineffective. Lake Breeze Sanitorium cottages, also known as Camp Breeze, on Grand Avenue in Waukegan, circa 1910 - BBDM 77.13

If people could not afford the sanitorium they would remain at home, often isolated from other family members. In the case of my grandmother, Marie, she stayed in a small cottage behind her parents' home in Sturtevant, Wisconsin.

In 1939, a 90-bed sanitorium was constructed on Belvidere Street in Waukegan, adjacent to today's Belvidere Park. The building was modern in design and became nationally known for its unique architecture.The building was designed by William L. Pereira and William A. Ganster of Ganster and Hennighausen. Pereira and Ganster's work was featured in a 1944 Museum of Modern Art exhibition in New York, featuring architectural achievements.

Sanitorium under construction, 1939 - BBDM 77.13

Sanitorium lobby. Photo by Hedrich-Blessing Studio, Chicago, circa 1940 - BBDM 77.20.

By the 1940s, the emphasis on the need for fresh air was gone, and patient rooms looked much as they do today. TB Sanitorium room. Photo by Hedrich-Blessing Studio, Chicago, circa 1940 - BBDM 77.13

The first vaccine for TB was developed at the Pasteur Institute in France between 1905 and 1921. Mass vaccination against TB did not begin until after World War II. Also in the 1940s, a series of antibiotics were developed to combat the disease.

Diagnosis relies on chest X-rays, a tuberculin skin test, blood tests, as well as microscopic examination and microbiological culture of bodily fluids. Treatment is difficult and requires long courses of multiple antibiotics. Sanitorium examination room, circa 1940 - BBDM 77.20

"Get Your Free Chest X-Ray Here" is painted on the front of this mobile tuberculosis unit, circa 1955. Photo by The Gerstenslager Company, Wooster, Ohio - BBDM 2009.13.1.

Beginning in 1974, the TB Sanitorium building was used by the Lake County Health Department for offices and clinical visits.

Update: When I wrote this post in 2010, the fate of the building and whether the Health Department would continue to use it were in discussion.

Fortunately, the "Belvidere Medical Building" continues to operate as part of the Lake County Health Department and serve the community.

National Poetry Month

In celebration of April as U.S. National Poetry Month, I thought I would share poems from Lake County residents.

The Academy of American Poets began National Poetry Month in 1996. It is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture.

One of my favorite published poems about Lake County is The Legend of Mish-i-mi-nong by Robert Pearce of Chicago. Robert was inspired by Crab Apple Island on Fox Lake, the lotus beds, and Native American legends. He completed the poem in 1899 and sent it to his father, Frank Pearce, who was living in Leavenworth, Kansas.

In turn, Frank illustrated the poem and sent it back to his son with a note: "I have endeavored to engross and illustrate it with my pen as a birth-day gift to you. May you find interwoven in each line and page the love of your affectionate Father." Even this generation's letters are poetic!


This is one of 10 pages from the poem, which was published in red leather binding in 1909. Dunn Museum 93.6.1

The beauty of the lotus beds in Lake County's Chain o' Lakes region inspired many. An excerpt from a poem written by Colonel John Vidvard of Grass Lake in 1916 reads:

From far off India's shores there came one day a mighty wind,
That carried in its shapeless arms a seed of wondrous kind;
And loathe, foresooth, to let it fall on uncongenial land,
Soared and soared o'er mount and vail and oaks that grandly stand
'Till Illinois shores were reached, where mid rice and break,
The wind let fall this precious seed in the waters of Grass Lake.

Vidvard was a great booster and conservator of the lotus. However, he mistakenly identified the local plants as Egyptian lotus (nelumbium speciosum). This was a common misconception, no doubt fueled by the exotic appeal of a plant making its way across the world to blossom on our shores. The species of lotus that grows in the Chain O' Lakes is the American lotus (nelumbo lutea), a native to the northeastern United States. (Postcard of Lotus on Grass Lake, circa 1907, Dunn Museum 61.8.2)

In 1896, Robert Darrow compiled and published, Poems by Residents of Lake County, Ill. Robert wrote in his preface that "This little volume is published for the purpose of showing that Lake County has many writers of poetry, of whom it may be proud."

To herald the spring, I chose the following poem by Nannie Bliss Colby (1851-1924) from Darrow's book. Nannie married Byron Colby and resided in Libertyville for many years. 

Spring
by Nannie Bliss Colby

Winter has flung his sceptre down,
His dreary reign is over;
And in the meadows, erst so brown,
We catch a glimpse of clover.

The maples wave their crimson tips.
In every breeze that passes,
The violets kiss with dainty lips,
The pale, sweet, springing grasses.

The crocus lists its golden head
to catch the sun's first glances,
the brook, along its pebbly bed,
With merry ripple dances.

The lilac nods each lovely plume
At snow-drops, upward springing;
In all the air a faint perfume,
Sweet hints of spring are bringing.

The wild birds trill their sweetest song
Of greeting, praise or pleasure;
And mother earth, ice-bound so long,
Yields up her choicest treasure.

Oh, spring, thou time of birds and flowers,
We give thee fondest greeting;
Would we could stay thy passing hours,
And make thy joys less fleeting.

~ ~ ~

These samples are a small introduction to poetry. Hopefully they inspire other Lake Countians to take up pen and paper to create beautiful prose.