Missing La Grange Records Found 135 Years Later

LA GRANGE, IL — For well over a century, it was thought that La Grange's first ordinances burned in a fire. But when they surfaced recently, that story figuratively went up in flames.

At Monday's Village Board meeting, Mark Truax, president of the La Grange Area Historical Society, recounted how the group discovered the old records.

A few months ago, La Grange resident David Wilkinson came in to do research on the history of the Stone Avenue train station in the society's offices.

To help him, society members Marilyn Faber, who died in early February, and Nancy Skog pulled out a stack of old documents and told Wilkinson that they may contain the information he was seeking, Truax said.

Upon closer examination, Wilkinson realized the documents included the Village Board's minutes and ordinances starting in 1879, when the village was founded, Truax said.

The society scanned the documents and put them in safe storage, Truax said. Members asked Village Clerk John Burns to look for the oldest book with village ordinances. The oldest one dated to May 1886.

The last entry in the recovered documents was Oct. 21, 1885. The first entry was Aug. 4, 1879, about a month after the first village election, Truax said. The records appeared to fill a gap.

In October 1886, a fire started in a meat market on Burlington Avenue in downtown La Grange. A news story said the blaze spread to buildings on nearby Fifth Avenue, now La Grange Road, Truax said. It was known that the Village Board met in a small office on present-day La Grange Road near Burlington. But the historical society cannot verify the exact address.

"The minutes from 1879 to 1885 were presumed to be lost in a fire," Truax said.

Just to make sure the ordinances were genuine, the society compared the handwriting of the clerk in 1884 and 1885 to that of the clerk in the year afterward. It matched. That would make sense, Truax said, because it was the same clerk.

"We have concluded that this book is the missing village minutes," Truax said. "Unfortunately, we don't know how we came across this book. We often receive donations anonymously, and they're just dropped off."