First the Potawatomis walked here, softly through the forest, stalking the plentiful wild game. There were no sounds other than the cry of birds, wind rustling through the trees, waves lapping against the shore. What the place was called in that time is not known to us.
In the year 1835, Chicago, or Fort Dearborn as it was then named, with a population near 500, was growing a bit crowded for some tastes. Anson H. Taylor, a young storekeeper, builder and trader who, along with his brother, had come out from the East, needed more elbow room. Anson and Charles Taylor had built the first bridge across the Chicago River three years earlier, a wooden span connecting the south bank of the river with the Green Bay Trail. While another brother, Augustine, continued to put his mark on the early Chicago landscape, that trail beckoned Anson.
Taylor, his wife, Eliza, and their infant son, Louis Erastus, followed the path along the lake, past the Ouillmette settlement, past the old Potawotami village that would come to be known as Indian Hill. Finally coming to rest on a high bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, they determined to build their home here, far from the muddy riverbank and crowds they had left behind.
Depending on which account you read, the Village of Glencoe got its name from a Coe's Glen," an acknowledgement of Matthew Coe's original ownership of the property in the heart of the town, or Glencoe, Scotland, said to be the town of Gurnee's birth but better known as the site of a bloody clan massacre that took place some three centuries ago. The Scottish word "glen" means a narrow secluded valley and may refer to the ravines near Sheridan Road. Glencoe's first seal was modeled after the seal of Glencoe, Scotland.
Gurnee did not live in his "castle" very long. He declared bankruptcy and moved to New York City in 1862, selling his home to Dr. Alexander Hammond four years later. And, with that transaction, a new chapter in Glencoe history was born.
In 1869, the newly incorporated Village of Glencoe held some 150 people. According to census figures, that number more than doubled by 1880 and grew to 569 in the next ten years. Some 200 of that number were children of school age. There were 1,020 Glencoe residents at the turn of the century and by 1920 the count had grown to 3,381.
Population stabilized between6,000 and 7,000 over the next 30 years. By 1960, however, it had jumped to 10,472, an increase of nearly 3,500 from the decade before. These figures probably reflect increased prosperity following the war years and the nationwide baby boom. By 1969 the number of people in the village had grown to 11,500.
Children grow up leave home; developers run out of land. The 1990 census recorded 8,500 residents, comprising3,310 households, living on 3.85 square miles of land that includes parks, beaches, three golf courses and two commercial districts.
If Anson Taylor were to pass through town today, he probably would keep on going in search of wide-open spaces. Dr. Hammond, on the other hand, would be astonished at a reality that surpasses his most grandiose dreams.
In the '60s and early '70s, Glencoe ranked third in the nation in median family income for communities of its size. In 1990, the median family income, $125,306, placed the village second in Illinois, seventh in the nation for its size.
More than wealth has contributed to the village's prestige. Poets, statesmen, skating champions, generals and captains of industry have either grown up in Glencoe or chosen it as their home.
The most famous Glencoe resident is the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, dramatist, Harvard professor and former Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, who graduated from the Glencoe school in 1907.
Film actors Bruce Dern and Lili Taylor grew up in Glencoe, as did TV star Fred Savage. Silent screen idol John Barrymore once spent the summer here. Television is represented by Chicago anchorman Walter Jacobson and ABC correspondent Ann Compton, who both spent their childhoods in Glencoe, and longtime resident Newton Minow, attorney, author and former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
Earle Hoover, of vacuum cleaner fame, chose Glencoe for his home as did advertising giant Leo Burnett and former Chicago Bears quarterback Mike Tomczak. August Zeising, president of American Bridge Co., later a division of U.S. Steel, lived in Glencoe for more than 50 years and contributed the land where Kalk Park now stands. The senior Paepkes of Container Corp. lived here in the summer. Their son, Walter, and his wife, Elizabeth, moved to Aspen, Colorado, to set up the music festival there. The Keatings of Ekco pots and pans lived in Glencoe, as did Judge James Wilkerson, the man who put Al Capone away, and Melville Stone, founder of the Chicago Daily News.
From early pioneers to the movers and shakers of today, Glencoe seems a pretty good place to come from or be going to.
Learn more about this city.
City of Glencoe, IL official site
City of Glencoe, IL Chamber of Commerce
City of Glencoe, IL newspaper
County of Glencoe, IL official site
State of Illinois official site