Traveler’s Sketchbook

First custom post type using classic editor

As remote and unsettled as our Village was in the 1850’s, settlers did know their land
was in Cook County, one of 54 counties organized in 1831 by the State of Illinois.
(Today, Illinois has 102 counties.)
Also, as early as the 1850’s, settlers were already calling their new home “Northfield.”
And that’s because, in 1848--seven years before Dennis Donovan arrived—the State of
Illinois gave settlers a say in how they ran their local government. Rather than following
the dictates of a centralized structure, run by a Board of Commissioners, the state gave
counties the option to form Townships, defined as a territory of land six miles square. As
a township, settlers had the freedom to elect their own officers and make their own
decisions. Cook County’s early settlers chose to do that, organizing both Northfield
and New Trier townships on April 2,1850.
In our modern era, Northfield and New Trier townships are among 29 townships outside
the area of Chicago and Evanston, and many have different boundaries than local
municipalities. Townships today make real estate assessments, maintain roads, sewers
and bridges and provide social service referrals and food pantries.
But in those early days, the local township and its tax-collecting power was a settler’s
only hope in getting primitive roads and drainage ditches built and regulating cattle,
horses and hogs.
In the case of New Trier Township, that meant organizing a government around a
population of 472 citizens, a mix of farmers who had emigrated from Germany and
entrepreneurial Chicagoans seeking to build fine homes and a better life. In Northfield
Township, spanning Northbrook, Glenview and parts of Northfield, the first ordinance
passed required a fine for any person who “shall suffer or permit any hog, goat or pig to
run at large.” And New Trier Township in 1871 minutes “Resolved that it shall not be
lawful to let run at large at any time during the year any horse or horses colts, mules or
asses…”
But back in the 1850’s, the decision to form townships was an important first step in
Northfield’s identity.
The real issue was the boundaries.
Townships in that era were defined as land six miles square. In the case New Trier
Township, the western boundary is what we today we know as Northfield Road, but
back then, it was—in the words of the township “a swampy peat bog that often burned
for weeks at a time, sending clouds of black smoke over the marsh-like Skokie swamp.”

In the case of Northfield Township, they served the “west three-quarters” of
Northfield.New Trier Township got its namelll
Similarly, Glenview Township
Some of the township sat on a flood plain. Concerns about roads, sewers and drainage
ditches was a high priority.