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Naperville
Friday, March 29, 2024

The History Detective – March Madness

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Many of the first Irish immigrants to Naperville were farmers and laborers. A quick review of the 1860 census reveals that there were 23 Irish-born people living in the countryside surrounding Naperville and an additional 30 Irish men, women and children living in town. Though the Irish were a significant minority (people of Germanic extraction were by far the largest ethnic group), they contributed greatly to the labor and skilled workforce in Naperville.

Margaret Nelson was just 21 in 1860 and a busy dressmaker for the ladies of Naperville. Mary Clifford was a young mother who may have lost her husband while crossing the Atlantic. She is living and working in Naperville as domestic help with her two-year-old son, James, at the home of lawyer, George Tucker. Charles Richmond, Naperville Academy teacher and principal, and Joseph Naper, town founder, Academy trustee, and first village president both had Irish maids in 1860; Ellen Costello lived with Richmond’s family and Ellen McCormick with the Napers. Michael Hines came to Naperville in 1835 and was a successful shoemaker, justice of the peace, village and township trustee, and village president (mayor).

Hines went to California during the Gold Rush and on his return trip bought a purportedly 42-year-old parrot in Menargo (Matchin, Panama?). Hines brought the parrot home to Naperville where it lived to be 72 years old. The parrot died in 1882 and was stuffed!

However, the largest population of Irish in Naperville may not have been people. The Irish Grazier hog was introduced to American hog husbandry via Mr. Greer of Oxford, Ohio in 1839. The Irish Grazier, according to the Western Stock Journal of 1870, is “white with a few spots of black, upright ears, light jowl, fine coating, and would fatten at any age.”

At a stock show or fair held in Naperville in 1841, a Mr. I. S. Norton of Rockford presented and won premium ribbons for two Irish Grazier hogs, a boar and a sow. Napervillians, Lewis Ellsworth bought the boar for $150 and General E. B. Bill bought the sow for $100. By the 1870s, there were over 1,000 hogs living in and around Naperville, how many of them were Irish Graziers, is unknown. Erin go braugh!

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Bryan Ogg
Bryan Ogg
Bryan Ogg is a local historian and curator of local legend, stories and lore.

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