A short history of Oswego’s landmark Burkhart Block

Between 1840 and 1858 seven of the nine living children of Johann Leonhard Burkhart immigrated to the United States from Birkach, Bavaria

Initially settling in and near Little Falls, New York, the first to arrive, Johann’s daughter, Margaret, met and married John Hem, a farmer and stonemason. From there, Barbara and John sent money back to Bavaria to, one-by-one, bring six of her siblings across the Atlantic to join her.

Not finding New York to their liking, however, the growing German immigrant extended family looked west to Illinois where they heard rich land was available at affordable prices. So during the winter of 1843-44, a 12-member family group of Hems, Burkharts, Haags, and Fausts headed west to Chicago.

Georg Leonhard Burkhart’s 1843 sailing ticket to the U.S. English translation: Leonhard Burkhart, Birkach has paid the fare for passage and accompanying baggage in the middle deck on the ocean crossing aboard the ship Alwina under Captain Krensfeld for New York only for one adult and child [with space for number of accompanying child/ children lined through] Bremen, May 31, 1843. Fried. Jacob Hichelhausen. (Little White School Museum collection)

Fast-growing, boisterous, muddy, swampy Chicago was definitely not what these immigrant German farmers were looking for, so they moved farther west, arriving in Kendall County’s Oswego Township in 1844. The families chose to claim land east of the growing village of Oswego along what is now known as Wolf’s Crossing Road on what was known locally as the Oswego Prairie. The Hems started with an 80-acre farm.

George Leonard and Anna Margaret Brunnemeyer Burkhart. (Little White School Museum collection)

Margaret’s younger brother, Georg Leonhard Burkhart—who quickly shortened his name to Leonard—soon bought his own 80-acre farm bordering the Hems’ to the north. Marrying Anna Margaret Brunnemeyer on Christmas Day, 1848 in Naperville, the young couple set out farming and raising a family. They were extraordinarily successful at both, being able to eventually gifting each of their eight children with their own farms or the monetary equivalent on their wedding days.

Their son, Leonard Frederick Burkhart, born on the family farm in 1859, but apparently grew up looking to be something more than just a farmer like the rest of his siblings. In 1881, he married Otilda Philopena Lang. Like Leonard’s parents, the couple turned their energy towards farming and building a family—but only briefly.

Because, as it turned out, Leonard Fred (as he was known), despite the farming that had been in their parents’ blood for generations, would also figure prominently in Oswego’s in-town business community, including giving the family name to one of Oswego’s most familiar commercial buildings.

Leonard Frederick and Otilda’s son, Oliver Andrew Burkhart, read law, became an attorney, was elected Kendall County State’s Attorney and was a federal court commissioner, as well as being the long-time Oswego Village Attorney. Along with that, he also invested in Oswego’s business community and became an early adopter of automotive technology—he was one of Oswego’s first automobile dealers.

The Oswego Banking Company was established in the south storefront of the Schickler Block in 1904. (Little White School Museum collection)

Then in 1904, F.H. Earl and D.M. Jay of Plano announced plans to open a bank in Oswego. E.W. Bowman of the Bowman Bank in Kalamazoo, Michigan was also interested in the new firm, named the Oswego Banking Company. Floyd Phelps was hired to run the enterprise, which located in the Schickler Building at the northwest corner of Main and Washington streets in Oswego.

The new bank opened in January 1904.

During the summer of that same year, Leonard Fred Burkhart acquired the private bank, and installed his son, Oliver A. Burkhart as the banker replacing Phelps.

But the space in the Schickler building was limited and Leonard Fred had his eye on the lot kitty-corner from the bank’s location.

In January 1908, he bought what was known as “the Smith Corner” at the southeast corner of the Main and Washington intersection with the intent to build a new brick block to house the family’s bank as well as other businesses.

The storey and a half frame building that occupied the site was a venerable old structure dating back several decades. But to make room for his new commercial block, the old had to go.

To make way for his new brick commercial block, Leonard Fred Burkhart had to clear the corner site. By the time construction began only the Greek Revival frame building at the corner was still standing. (Little White School Museum collection)

As the Kendall County Record reported from Oswego on April 1, 1908: “Oswego village is to have a new bank and office building. It will be a brick block, situated on the corner where the electric cars turn to cross the trestle on the site formerly occupied by the waiting station. The old building has been torn down and with its razing one of the oldest landmarks of the village passes away. The new structure is being built by L.F. Burkhart, the Oswego banker; and the bank will be located in it, and the rest of the building will consist of offices for the professional men of Oswego.”

With construction underway, Leonard Fred began casting about for tenants, and instantly found one in his son, Oliver’s auto dealership partnership with his cousin, Charles Shoger. The pair had been selling autos to Oswego residents for some years, eventually dealing in cars manufactured by E.M.F., the Flanders (eventually bought out by Studebaker), Jackson, Empire, Olds, Carter, and Studebaker. A set of gasoline pumps was also considered for the future.

The completed Burkhart Block housed (left to right) the Burkhart & Shoger Garage, the Oswego State Bank, the Oswego Post Office, and the Oswego telephone exchange. This photo of the building was taken about 1913 by Dwight Young. Little White School Museum collection)

But with the auto dealership facing Washington Street and his bank in the corner suite with its unique corner doorway, Burkhart needed more businesses to fill out the block’s two storefronts that would face South Main Street. In business, timing is often the most crucial factor leading to success, and that was certainly the case with Burkhart’s new building.

The Burkhart & Shoger Garage, owned by Oliver A. Burkhart (left) and Charles Shoger (right) on Washington Street just east of Main, in 1914. Burkhart and Shoger were dealers for EMF and Studebaker autos with four new ones parked in front in this photo. Little White School Museum collection)

The Oswego Post Office, which had been located in the false-front frame building across the alley from the Union Block on the east side of Main Street since the 1870s, was becoming cramped and the postmaster was looking for a new home, one that Burkhart was happy to offer to him.

The Chicago Telephone Company’s new switchboard in the Burkhart Block in March 1911. Above, Orma Young Shoger connects a caller while Ina Huntoon handles other calls. (Little White School Museum collection)

Further, the Chicago Telephone Company’s Oswego switchboard (later Illinois Bell Telephone) had outgrown its home on the second floor above Cutter’s Drug Store and was looking for a new, larger, location. Burkhart suggested he had just the spot for them, and they quickly took him up on the idea.

By the end of January 1912, all the businesses had moved into the new Burkhart Block, where they were all slated to remain for the next several decades—with a few changes.

Oliver’s brother, Clinton, joined the banking business early on, and continued as the bank president for many years. He was also elected Oswego Village President for several terms. He continued with the bank until it closed due to the combined effects of the Great Depression and a daring 1932 daylight robbery. After the Oswego State Bank was forced to close, Oswego didn’t become home to another bank until the Oswego Community Bank was established in 1958.

Interior shot of the Oswego State Bank, probably taken in 1913 shortly after it opened at the corner of Main and Washington streets. (Mark Harrington collection)

In 1925, Oliver Burkhart’s younger brother, Ralph M. “Burkie” Burkhart, bought the car business, renaming it the R.M. Burkhart Garage. He became a Pontiac dealer in 1934 and operated the business there until he retired in 1971, selling the business to Jim Detzler, who maintained the “Ugly Little Showroom” until moving out of downtown to larger quarters at Zero Boulder Hill Pass. When Detzler assumed ownership of the dealership, it was the first time since the Burkhart Block was built that a Burkhart wasn’t involved in a business located in it.

The Oswego Post Office continued in the Burkhart Block until the Postmaster George Bartholomew decided to move it to larger quarters in the Schickler Block across the intersection due to the community’s accelerating population growth. The facility moved in late March 1958 and remained there for a decade until Oswego’s “new” post office—the current, badly cramped facility at Madison and Jackson—opened in 1969.

Burkhart’s Garage, with gas pumps, during World War II in 1942. (Little White School Museum collection)

And while Illinois Bell’s old Oswego switchboard was replaced by automatic dial equipment in 1939, the storefront they occupied in 1911 continued to be their Oswego home until 1969 when the new automated switching station opened at Washington Street and Ill. Route 71. In 1971, the new facility allowed Illinois Bell’s Oswego customers to be the first in Illinois to receive speed dialing, conference calling, call forwarding, and call waiting services.

The Burkhart Block, with businesses (left to right) Burkhart Pontiac, the Kopper Kettle, the Jacqueline Shop, and Illinois Bell Telephone’s switching station. Photo by Homer Durand in the collections of the Little White School Museum.

With the departure of its core occupants, the Burkhart Block became the home of many other enterprises over the years. For instance, the old post office storefront became the location of the first Jacqueline Shop women’s clothing store when Jackie and Ken Pickerill opened it in 1957. The upscale store moved to the historic A.O. Parke Building at Main and Jackson in 1960.

Other businesses in the Burkhart Block have ranged through the years from the Kopper Kettle restaurant to the Elmer Fudge candy store to the Booze Bin liquor store. Today, the building is still a popular location for a variety of retail businesses.

Everybody here came from somewhere else…

A number of observances will be held during June, and among them will be celebrating National Immigrant Heritage Month.

And here in North America, everyone can confidently say we’re all descended from immigrants. The indigenous people Europeans found living in North and South America when they finally got here for good in the 15^th Century came from eastern Asia. Exactly HOW they got here is still debated by scientists and historians, not to mention those indigenous people themselves.

The best evidence now is that those earliest adventurous arrivals came by boat down along the Pacific Ocean edge of the ice sheet then covering much of North America, followed many centuries later by their distant cousins who took advantage of the ice-free corridor that opened the land bridge between Asia and North America.

During the next several thousand years they created the civilizations and cultural traditions that were confronted with the European invasion of North America and the continued exploitation of South America’s people and resources.

By the first third of the 19^th Century, American settlement had reached our home area here in northern Illinois’ Fox River Valley. Successive government actions were in process to drive the remaining Native People living here to lands west of the Mississippi River to open the entire region east of the river to White settlement and land ownership.

My great-grandfather, Henri Francois Matile, immigrated from Switzerland in 1867, first locating in Erie, Pennsylvania before moving to a farm outside Wellsville, Kansas. He’s pictured above about 1900, seated in the front row, with all of his living children, having outlived two wives.

Here in Kendall County, the first White settlers were Americans who had drifted west looking for cheap farmland and new business opportunities. But starting in the 1840s, foreign immigrants began arriving, seeking the same things their American cousins were.

The 1840s were fractious times in Europe, with disorder and revolution in the air, especially in what soon became the German Reich. Thousands of solid German farmers and business people left the turmoil of their homes and risked the trip across the Atlantic to try their luck in the United States. A fair number of those hardy souls ended up here in my home area of Oswego Township and elsewhere in Kendall County. Burkharts, Schogers (many of who simplified their name to Shoger), Hafenrichters, Ebingers, Schlapps and others came, liked what they saw, and put down roots.

Arriving about the same time were Scots farmers, many livestock experts, who were leaving their homes seeking land of their own to farm, it being nearly impossible for non-titled people to obtain their land in Scotland.

My mother’s maternal grandparents were the descendants of early arrivals in North America, dating back to the French and Indian War era of the 1760s. The family emigrated from the Pennsylvania Dutch country to Illinois in 1850 along with their neighbors and cousins.

Those two groups had been here only a short while before another group of Germans arrived, but these were America’s own Germans. Many of the families had lived in the “Pennsylvania Dutch” country of the east for more than a century before they decided to seek their fortunes on the rich prairies of northern Illinois. And so came the Lantz, and Schall, and Stark, and other families, who even after living in what eventually became the United States for 100 years and more still spoke German at home.

The whole group of farming families soon intermarried, creating a web of cousins that persists to the present day.

They were joined by successive waves of Norwegians, Swedes, Welsh, and Danes who joined the mix that included a rich leavening of French Canadians who’d arrived earlier and added their rich culture to the region’s mix.

Following the end of the Civil War, a wave of Black farmers and business owners, almost all former enslaved people, arrived to settle, along with Hispanics, Eastern and Southern Europeans and others who brought their Catholic heritage with them as they provided the personnel for the Fox Valley’s growing industries.

My mother’s paternal grandparents immigrated from East Prussia to the U.S. in 1882 after cousins who had earlier crossed the Atlantic wrote back to say what a wonderful place America was. One of their descendants still lives in the house they built after they arrived.

And as the decades passed, the mix has just kept getting richer as the region’s seemingly bottomless and ever-changing business and industrial environment has continued to evolve. Eastern Europeans, Asians and Southeast Asians, Pakistanis, Indians, Pacific Islanders and people whose heritages stretch back to virtually every corner of the earth come and go to and from the dynamic melting pot we call home here in our small corner of northern Illinois.

It’s become all the rage in certain circles lately to disparage and harass, both legally and often physically, immigrants that some consider to be the wrong kind of additions to our American melting pot. And looking at history, that has unfortunately always been the case. The Chinese, the Irish, the Italians, Catholics as a whole, Jews, Blacks, Hispanics and other entire groups have bourn the burden of intense discrimination—and in so many cases still are.

Nevertheless, we, as a nation, still welcome strangers who come to get ahead, to make our communities and their lives better and we’re all the better for it. Not the least reason being that we all really are, ultimately, from somewhere else, the descendants of those who made the decision to make better lives for their families and themselves by venturing out and away and ending up with us here. Those are the ones, in particular, we should all remember with gratitude during National Immigrant Heritage Month.