In April of 1918, Peter Sheid, a popular blacksmith who once lived in McHenry and Crystal Lake, passed away. On April 11, his funeral service was held at St. Mary’s Church. While helping prepare the grave, N.J. Justen noticed smoke pouring from the roof of the Church. He sped over and alerted Rev. Edward Berthold,… Continue reading The Fire and Rebirth of St. Mary’s Catholic Church
During Friday night and into Saturday morning of June 29 & 30th, 1898 much of the midwest experienced torrential downpours in such a great amount that flash flooding was prevalent in several areas. From North Dakota all the way through Ohio, the weather ran rampant on small towns and cities alike. Most estimates guess that… Continue reading The Flash Flood of 1898
On a Sunday morning, September 3, 1911, a couple of fishermen who were out on the Fox River and made a gruesome find. Floating in the river was the body of a man. Authorities were called and after the body was removed from the water, they could see it was wrapped in a rain cover… Continue reading The Mysterious Case of Frederick Wennerstrom
In the early morning of Tuesday, Aug 16, 1911, the West McHenry Post Office was robbed. It probably wasn’t too surprising, as there were a string of post office & bank robberies in the area at that time. About four days before the McHenry Post Office was hit, the South Elgin Post Office was robbed… Continue reading West McHenry Post Office Robbery
While doing research for another blog post, I ran across the above memorial in the McHenry Plaindealer from March 1946. I became curious was to how Pvt. Pearson passed. Was it fighting the Germans or over in the Pacific or fighting the Japanese? It turns out that is was something just as tragic, yet… Continue reading Cherished Memories Of Days When We Were All Together.
In July 1938, the McHenry area had some of the worst floods in its history. A huge storm on June 30th brought torrential rains The storm saturated the area and caused area rivers and lakes to swell. Damage and destruction to local fields, crops and buildings were due to the rivers flooding their banks. However, probably the… Continue reading The Flood of 1938
On March 30, 1908 one of the worst train wrecks took place here in McHenry. Around 8:30 am a train loaded with 24 head of cattle and six calves were headed to Ringwood from Crystal Lake. Just south of the McHenry train depot there was a slight curve. The train hit the curve too quickly… Continue reading The McHenry Train Crash of 1908
