(This is the presentation given at History Happy Hour on Sept. 12)
The Allerton family is one of the oldest families in the United States, with the founding member, Isaac Allerton coming over on the Mayflower. The history of the Allerton family was well documented in a book entitled A History of the Allerton Family in the United States, 1585 to 1885, and A Genealogy of the Descendants of Isaac Allerton, “Mayflower Pilgrim,” Plymouth, Mass., 1620. authored by Walter S. Allerton of New York City in 1888. The copy we have was published by the head of branch of the Allerton family that we know, Samuel Waters Allerton, of Chicago, Illinois, in 1900. This edition was published as a revision that added facts and corrected errors from the 1888 version.
Isaac Allerton was born sometime between 1583 to 1585 in the south-eastern part of England. He lived in the Suffolk area of the country, then moved to London briefly before moving to Holland in 1609. In November 1620, Isaac and his wife Mary Norris, along with 3 of their 4 children, Bartholemew, Remember, and Mary came to Plymouth on the Mayflower. Their 4th child, Sarah stayed in Holland with Isaac’s sister Sarah Priest until a ship named the Ann brought them over in 1623. Isaac was generally considered the wealthiest of all the Pilgrims, given the title of “Mr.” in the writings of contemporaries like William Bradford, a sign of superiority and deference. Isaac was an integral part of that first colony, conducting business on behalf of the colonials over the course of 7 trips back to England. Isaac’s first wife Mary died as a result of a stillbirth in February, 1621, so he married Fear Brewster, daughter of Elder William Brewster, in 1626. Fear delivered a son, Isaac, in 1630 and died in 1636.
Generally more concerned with making a living through his business, plus holding considerably more liberal religious ideals, Isaac fell out of favor with the Puritans and moved to New Amsterdam, now New York, after the death of his second wife. He stayed there until 1646, when he moved to New Haven, Connecticut with his third wife Johanna. Isaac died of old age in early 1659 and was buried in New Haven.
I won’t detail each family member between Isaac of the Mayflower and our Chicago Allerton family, as they were a prolific family, but here is the lineage – Isaac, Isaac, Isaac, John, Isaac, Reuben, Samuel W. and finally our Samuel Waters Allerton.
Samuel was born in 1828 in Amenia, New York, the youngest of nine children to Samuel and Hannah Hurd Allerton. The story goes that the family cried when Samuel was born because there was another mouth to feed. When Samuel was seven, his father lost his fortune as one of the promoters of building a woolen factory once the tariffs were reduced and all the factories suffered. His mother cried at the loss of highly prized two horses in the repossession of their property and our genealogy says that “Samuel threw his arms around his mother’s neck, saying, that he would be a man, and provide for her.” He kept his word, going to work on his father’s rented farm in Yates County, NY at age twelve. Together, they worked that rental farm until they had saved up enough to buy a farm for his father. Samuel and his older brother Henry then rented a farm and when they had saved up enough, they bought their own farm in Newark, NY. With those earnings, Samuel rented a farm of his own and at the end of three years of toil, he had earned $3200. Going back to work on the shared farm with his brothers, Samuel began to trade livestock in a small way, going to New York and Albany for the sales. This gave him the confidence to pursue livestock trading for his living. Since they had the farm paid off, Samuel made a deal with Henry to keep the $3000 they had on hand and Henry would keep the farm. Henry agreed and Samuel bought 100 head of cattle and took them to New York. The market was bad and he lost $700 on the sale. He kept at it, moving up to Erie where a break in the railroad line required that cattle had to be offloaded and driven to the next section of railroad. He bought another 100 cattle and shipped them to New York on the Erie Railroad. That venture netted him $3000. He drifted west and began raising cattle in Illinois. Becoming sick and losing his fortune in a panic on the bank, Samuel moved back to Newark and bought an interest in a store with his brother. Regaining his health, he gather together what monies he had and borrowed $5000 and headed back to Illinois. This time, he went directly to Fulton County, where a young woman by the name of Pamilla Thompson lived. Pamilla had been the draw to return to Illinois, but the proximity to Chicago was not to be discounted. Samuel moved to Chicago in March of 1860 and married Pamilla on July 1st.
He continued to trade livestock, managing a stockyard for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad starting in 1861. It was a tedious business because the stockyards at that time were spread out all over the city at the end of each railroad company’s terminus in the city. In 1863, on a tip from his uncle, Samuel set up terms with a bank based on a character reference from an acquaintance of his named Tobey, then proceeded to purchase all the hogs in the stock yards of Chicago to ship East. When he approached the original bank with a sight draft for $80,000, they turned him down, saying they hadn’t expected him to need any more than $5,000. Always willing to continue with his plans regardless of the obstacles, Samuel used another friendly connection to find a bank who would be willing to take on the $80,000 loan at one percent interest. This bank was Aikens & Norton. Before the Civil War, there was no centralized national currency, but Congress had passed the National Bank Act in order to issue bonds to secure the circulation. Banks were slow to become National Banks and use the new national currency, including Aikens & Norton. Samuel inquired about this and the bank owner didn’t think he could sell stock in a National Bank. Samuel and 5 of his friends gave $10,000 each in stock purchases for the upgrade, and Aikens opened the First National Bank of Chicago.
That same year, on June 10, Pamilla gave birth to a daughter, Katharine Rennett. Fatherhood prompted Samuel to buy land in Piatt County, 1280 acres that were the first of the Allerton empire. Not abandoning his “first love” of stock trading, Samuel is noted as having been the first to be published in the Chicago Tribune in favor of a Union Stock Yards. In 1864, Samuel again worked with his contemporaries to found the Chicago Union Stock Yards. They opened on Christmas Day 1865.
1871 brought more diversification and some struggle. Samual organized the Allerton Packing Company on Halstead near the grounds of the Chicago Union Stock Yards. He also became the president of the St. Louis National Stockyards and was honored with the naming of a hotel named Allerton House nearby. The hotel name was later changed to the National Hotel. In September fire struck Samuel’s Burlington Warehouse “A” in Chicago, which housed broomcorn, flammable spirits, machinery, food, and household items, of which insurance only covered $350,000 of the $638,000 loss. The Great Chicago Fire broke out in October and while the family home at 644 Michigan Avenue was fine, the First National Bank suffered severely. Fortunately, the contents of the safe survived intact and after 3 months of operating out of temporary facilities, the reconditioned building opened January 1, 1872.
Samuel continued building his empire in 1872, adding Pittsburgh and New Jersey stock yards to his holdings. He influenced the railroad to extend to his large Piatt County holdings, giving him the ability to ship his livestock to market easily.
In March 1873, Samuel became a father for the second time, with the birth of a son, named Robert Henry for his uncle who had been such a large part of Samuel’s early career. Robert’s mother Pamilla never really recovered from his birth, and in fact was unable to attend his baptism. Mrs. Anna Rathbone stepped in to hold little Robert during the ceremony.
In 1878, Robert and Kate contracted typhoid fever. They recovered, but in 1880, Pamilla and the children contracted scarlet fever. Pamilla died and both the Robert and Kate lost much of their hearing. Treatment at the Politzer Clinic in Vienna yielded some success for Kate, but Robert remained hearing impaired, an impediment that influenced his life significantly. The census in 1880 lists Pamilla’s younger sister, Agnes as part of the Allerton household. She likely had come to assist the family during their troubles. In March of 1882, Samuel and Agnes married. She was 30 years younger than him and only 5 years older than Sam’s daughter, Kate. Since Robert was still only 7 years old, Agnes became his mother in all the important ways, but to Kate, she remained Aunt Agnes.
By 1883, Samuel was Piatt County’s largest landowner with the total acreage reaching almost 12,000 acres. He had purchased a large farm in Vermilion County and looked to establish a town there as well. Samuel and Joseph Sidell started a grain company and developed the town near it, convincing the C&EI Railroad to come into town across his land of course. Samuel also established the town’s first private bank in 1892, donated funds to build a schoolhouse a year later, installed a water system, and donated materials for sidewalks. Agnes Allerton equipped the high school’s domestic science room and employed the first teacher.
Having conquered much of the business world, Samuel made a foray into the political sphere. He was a political fan of Henry Clay and Horace Greeley, and was a lifelong Republican. In 1893, Samuel ran for the office of Mayor of the city of Chicago on the Republican ticket. He lost by 10% of the popular vote to Democrat Carter Harrison Sr. It was Harrison’s 5th non-consecutive term as Mayor. Unfortunately, Harrison was assassinated later that year by a rabid fan. That didn’t negate Samuel’s importance to the city though, as he chaired the National and State Exhibit Committee of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.
At the publication of the genealogy in 1900, Samuel was said to have 40,000 acres of farmland which he cultivated “in the very best manner”, had continued to ship livestock to New York and England, and had business interest in streetcars. He helped promote the Farmer’s Institute, a predecessor to the Farm Bureau. At the end of the meetings, he always gave the same talk, “How to Grow Rich and Be Happy on 40 Acres of Land.” Robert encouraged Samuel to publish his ideas on innovative agricultural practices: tiled field drainage, crop rotation, and supplemental fertilization. In 1907, his book Practical Farming: A Treatise on Present Farming Conditions and How to Improve Them was published.
By the time of Samuel’s passing from diabetes complications in 1914, he had amassed a total of 78,000 acres across Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Nebraska. He owned homes on Prairie Avenue in Chicago, in Lake Geneva, WI, and one in South Pasadena, CA. He had served on the Board of Directors of the Chicago City Railway for more than 20 years, bringing electric trolleys to the city. He served as Vice President of the Chicago Citizens Law and Order League in 1885 and as the director of the First National Bank of Chicago for 50 years. When Samuel passed away, Robert was overseas and didn’t hear the news immediately. Once he received word, he rearranged his travel to come home immediately, not sure if he was going to Pasadena or Chicago. He finally made it to Chicago on March 13 and Samuel was put to rest on March 14, 1914 at Graceland Cemetery.
Agnes and Robert became joint executors of the $4 million estate. Agnes received the Lake Geneva home and Robert received the Prairie Avenue home, plus the remainder of the Piatt County land not already in his name. Kate was given the Vermilion County farmland. Robert also inherited positions of power: his father’s spot on the Board of Directors of the First National Bank of Chicago, presidency for the First National Bank of Allerton, IL, the First National Bank of Spaulding, NE, the Pittsburgh Union Stock Yards, the Pittsburgh Provision Company, the Art Marble Company, and the A.T. Land Company. Also, he held a position with the First National Bank of Monticello.
Agnes Allerton is credited with giving her stepson Robert a love of gardening, music, literature and art. She truly was the mother in his life. She died in December 1924, after a 2 year battle with liver disease. One whole section of Agnes’ will was devoted to Robert, mentioning their mutual affection and the kindness he had shown her over the years. The bulk of her $2 million estate fell to Robert and the income from a $400,00 trust was distributed to her sister, Phoebe Wysong of Canton, IL and her four nieces: Kate Johnstone, Jessie T. Dighton of Monticello, Berintha Greene of Winnetka, IL and Pamilla Clark of Pasadena.
At 22 years old in 1885, Kate Allerton married a prominent Chicago physician named Dr. Francis Sidney Papin, originally of Keokuk, IA. Four years later, having contracted tuberculosis and seeking a treatment in Mexico, Papin died.
In 1898, Kate remarried, to a friend of her first husband that had attended their nuptials, Hugo Johnstone. Johnstone was also from Keokuk, the son of a judge. He was a member of the New York Stock Exchange, president of the Jersey City Stock Yards Company, and president of the Pasadena Dredging Company. Kate and Hugo lived in New York and Pasadena. They had 2 sons, Allerton and Vanderburgh. The boys ostensibly lived a charmed life, with Kate purchasing the lot next to their Pasadena home and turning it into a regulation baseball field for the boys’ use.
However, Kate and Hugo’s marriage was not happy. In August 1903, Kate sued for divorce, naming a burlesque actress, Nina Farrington, as correspondent. The divorce wasn’t finalized until 1931. Hugo remarried, a woman named Olive Mitchel, widow of former New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel. Hugo died of colon cancer in 1947 in San Diego. Kate died December 31, 1937 in Pasadena of complications from brain cancer. She was buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago just a few days later.
Onto the founder of Allerton Park – Robert Allerton! Born in March 1873 when his father was 45 years old and already a multi-millionaire, Robert was surely a product of his elite upbringing. He grew up on fashionable Prairie Avenue in Chicago with Ethel Fields, daughter of Marshall Fields and Franky Hibbard and Frederic Clay Bartlett, sons of hardware tycoons William Gold Hibbard and Adolphus Bartlett from the firm of Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & Co., known today as True Value Hardware. Having lost his hearing at the tender age of 7, Robert didn’t care for school, receiving assistance from private tutors to help him keep up with his classmates. He attended two private schools, the Allen Academy and The Harvard School, a college preparatory school for boys. In 1889, Robert followed Freddy Bartlett to St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. Whether it was his Universalist religious upbringing clashing with the Anglican staff, or some other reason, both Robert and Frederic left St. Paul’s without graduating.
Robert had taken a couple of classes at the Art Institute of Chicago in his teenage years and then came the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in October 1893. Along with Frederic, who noted in his memoir that both young men were enthralled with the vast amount of creativity on display at the Palace of Fine Arts, which was packed floor to ceiling with art, Robert desire to study art was solidified. The young men convinced their serious business-minded fathers that they should go to Munich to study, Robert with the sum of $1000 from his father to live and attend classes for the year. Robert and Frederic shared a sitting room and bedroom only 10 minutes’ walk from their first tutor, called Master in Frederic’s memoir. Sometime that winter, the Master submitted their applications to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. To their surprise, they were both accepted. Both gentlemen spent 3 years studying in Munich and then moved on to art school in Paris where they spent 2 more years. Summers were spent back in the states, with Freddy increasingly spending time with his first love, a young woman named Dora. We don’t know why exactly, perhaps it was feeling like he came up short by comparison with his best friend, but the story goes that in 1898, Robert burned all his paintings and came back to America for good.
Interested in making the family holdings here in Piatt County his primary home, Robert enlisted the aid of architect friend, John Borie from Pennsylvania, to help him with the design work. John Joseph “Dickey” Borie, III had studied architecture as a special student at the University of Pennsylvania, but left before obtaining his degree to study at Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. This is likely where Borie and Robert were introduced as they were both there in 1896. Or it is possible that the marriage of Dickey’s older sister, Emily Borie to Arthur Lanard Ryerson of Chicago in 1889 had been their introduction as Ryerson and Allerton moved in the same elite circles. Either way, the two gentlemen had struck up a friendship, and it was John Borie that Robert asked to sail with him to Europe to seek inspiration for what his home should look like. Robert and Dickey settled on modeling the home after Ham House in Richmond, Surrey, England. Modifying the traditional H-pattern of Ham House, Borie drew up plans for Robert’s home and they came home to get started in late 1898.
Construction began on the home in 1899, with William Mavor of Chicago working as the contractor. There was a labor strike in Chicago at the time, so many of Mavor’s 150 laborers didn’t have work near home. The house was finished enough to live in by 1900 and Robert began his artistic career, painting the canvas that we now call Allerton Park. Using his architect friends, Borie and Joseph Corson Llewellyn, Robert carved his mark into the blank canvas that the fallow farmland provided. First, he added the Carriage House immediately after the house was finished, then the Gatehouse for his head gardener in 1906, then the Marble Hallway linking the mansion and Carriage House in 1916, and finally the House in the Woods joined the buildings in 1917. An ever-evolving creative work, the gardens also took shape over the years. Robert, the supervisor and visionary, took trips each year to receive inspiration and collect art from all over the world.
Art wasn’t simply a passing fancy, Robert had joined the Art Institute as an annual member in 1894. In 1902, he became a governing life member, and in 1918 he was elected trustee. In 1911, Robert donated a sculpture by John Donoghue entitled Young Sophocles Leading the Chorus of Victory after the Battle of Salamis, but his notable gifts to the Institute began in earnest in the 1920’s and continued throughout his life. He donated over 6000 pieces to the Art Institute of Chicago and if you want to hear more about that specific topic, you should come back to HHH on November 21st!
Robert’s life in the upper crust of Chicago provided him with plenty of connections in the art world. In the years between 1901 and 1912, there was something of a possible romance between Robert and Ellen “Bay” Emmet. Emmet was a portraitist from New York who Robert commissioned to paint portraits of his father and himself. Carrying out their friendship via letters and scarce visits, it seemed like Robert was more enamored of Bay. Whether it was Ellen’s mother opposition to the match, the great distance from rural Central Illinois to the necessary art scene and family Ellen had in New York, or because Robert never formally pursued a suit due to his perceived handicap of hearing loss, the two never wed.
However, Robert got his chance at a family with the introduction to John Gregg Allerton in November of 1922. John Wyatt Gregg was not from the Chicago elite, but rather the second son and middle child of a working-class family from Milwaukee. Both his parents passed away by 1921 and after transferring from the University of Wisconsin to the University of Illinois in 1922, it would not be long until he met Robert. The two were paired up at a Dad’s Day fraternity lunch in the fall of 1922 by William F. Lodge, Robert’s friend, and William C. Lodge, John’s fraternity brother. As John tells it, they met and lived happily ever after.
John Gregg graduated from the University of Illinois with his degree in architecture in 1926. He began work at David Adler’s architectural firm in Chicago in 1927, and was given design work to do for The Farms and he lived in an apartment owned by Robert in Chicago. In 1930 when David Adler’s wife died in a car crash and his firm was shuttered, John Gregg moved from Chicago to live permanently at The Farms and began working in earnest as the architect for the property and “farm manager”. John was in charge of all the architectural design Robert required and the pair continued to collect art and create spaces to complement it, traveling the world over each winter.
On one such trip in 1938, they made a stop in Kauai on the advice of a friend Mrs. Walter Dillingham. Robert and John needed a place to stay for their final night in Hawaii and Louise encouraged them to stay and see the garden property at the south end of the island that was conveniently for sale. Sure that they had found their next home, the men put in an offer to purchase the property within one month.
After the purchase, John set about designing a simple home for them to live in on the island. Situated near Lawai Beach, they named the property Lawai-Kai. The men created a similar set of garden rooms on the property there, using some of the sculptures shipped from Illinois and purchasing others that fit with the tropical setting. Still traveling back to Illinois each year during the temperate months, that all changed in December 1941, with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Robert, at age 68, assisted in the war effort by planting sweet potatoes and offering up some of his property for soldiers to plant their own gardens. John served as First Lieutenant in the Kauai Volunteers, drilling a platoon of 100 Filipino soldiers, spent time in the Lihue Intelligence Office, and as assistant to the sheriff, since he was over the 38-year-old limit for the draft. They remained on the island for two years, returning to Illinois via an empty troop plane in 1944. They flew back to Kauai in time for Thanksgiving but plans to donate The Farms to the University of Illinois were starting to take shape. In July of 1946, the announcement was made that ownership transfer would happen in October.
In the Lawai-Kai years, Robert and John continued to collect and donate art, but to the Honolulu Academy of Art, now the Honolulu Museum of Art, instead of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ever a patron of the Arts, in 1951, Robert commissioned Chicago artist Rainey Bennett to create 4 paintings to put into the walls of the Oak Room to replace the family portraits he had removed before moving away. They also maintained roughly 10 acres of land here on the property, the house and area around what is now the Music Barn, and came back yearly in the spring to visit their former home, family and friends. The ownership of property in Illinois allowed John to retain the ability to be the executor of Robert’s will as well.
In 1960, the men, calling each other father and son for nearly 40 years, finally acquired the legal right to call each other family. The adoption laws in Illinois had not provided for adult adoption, so they waited until the laws were changed in 1959. On March 4, 1960 John became the legally adopted son of Robert.
In August 1964, Robert and other philanthropists saw their efforts come to fruition when Congress recognized the need to conserve and protect the tropical plant resources of the world. The Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden was given a non-profit charter and Robert donated $1 million to fund the initiative. It wasn’t a moment too soon as just a few short months later in December, Robert fell and broke his hip. While in the hospital just 2 days later, he died at age 91. Robert was cremated and his ashes were spread over the bay at Lawai-Kai.
In 1965, John Gregg legally changed his name to John Wyatt Gregg Allerton to continue the philanthropy in the Allerton name. John lived his later years much as he had with Robert for all those decades, enhancing Lawai-Kai, traveling, visiting The Farms, and stewarding the resources passed down to him from his father. When John died in 1986 after undergoing heart surgery at the Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital, he was cremated and his ashes were spread in the bay at Lawai-Kai, just like Robert. John’s art went to the Honolulu Academy of Art, the Lawai-Kai home and gardens were given to the Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden, now the National Tropical Botanical Garden, and the rest of his estate was combined with Robert’s trust to benefit the Honolulu Academy of Art, the Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
As John never had children, the Allerton line through Samuel Allerton ended with him, but there were lots of Allerton family members on the east coast that still carry the Allerton name.
