Hey, kid from 1890 -- our builders found your lost stuff

When we decided to build an addition onto our old house, our contractors told us to expect surprises.

But we weren't expecting baby stuff from the 19th Century to be hidden in our walls.

As of Wednesday, Mike McElligott and Kurt Smith (of McElligott/Smith Builders in Mundelein and Evanston) have found a couple of wooden alphabet blocks from a set marked for sale at 2 cents, two floppy hats, an artist's paintbrush, two wool caps, five unmatched shoes, a spoon, one tiny boot, a brush to clean and polish shoes, a wooden block that challenged a kid to solve the "6 + 6 =?" problem, and one page of extremely neat handwriting homework.

The adults left behind some goodies, too - a shoe, a glass flask with a cork, and a bottle of "Gurney's Laundry Blue" manufactured by Puhl & Webb of Chicago.

"It was in the bottom of the studs spaces," McElligott says. "It's almost like it fell down the walls before they were ever insulated."

So it's not like they left these belongings when they built our house in 1890 as some sort of time capsule for us to find in the 21st Century?

"I doubt it," says McElligott.

"Something just fell down some stud spaces," Smith says. "Maybe kids playing in the attic."

The items dropped into the gaps between the wood studs ended up underneath the landing of the back stairs off our kitchen, Smith says.

"These are probably things kids lost and their mom and dad got mad at them," McElligott says, noting that none of the shoes match.

"I love the shoe brush," McElligott adds, envisioning a boy wearing one of those old caps being ordered to polish his shoes. "You've got to wonder if somebody threw that down there intentionally."

The old laundry bottle and a slip-on rain rubber boot from the Norfolk Rubber Co. are the only things with labels. The bottle has a history.

The 1894 annual report by the Factory Inspectors of Illinois noted that John Puhl, manager of Puhl & Webb at 157 E. Kinzie St., was fined $5 plus costs for employing "four children without avidavits." A book of notable Chicagoans says Thomas Joseph Webb was born to Irish immigrants in Lake County on June 1, 1860, organized Puhl & Webb as manufacturers of grocer shelf items in 1893, was president of his 23rd Ward Democratic Club, and was elected trustee of the Sanitary District of Chicago in 1900.

"These old houses always have something," says Smith, who suggests he and McElligott probably will find more antiques in our walls.

"On older houses, we always find some weird stuff - kids toys, newspapers, cards, pictures," McElligott says. "It kind of slows your day down, but it's cool to think that little kid who lost his toy, we found it 80 years later."

Or 118 years later.

Newspapers often were used as insulation, especially during the Depression and war years when money was tight. One newspaper McElligott found was worth saving.

"The headline was that the Bears won the championship and they played indoors," McElligott says. That must have been the 1932 Chicago Bears 9-0 victory over the Portsmouth Spartans, played inside Chicago Stadium because of a subzero, blizzard. The only touchdown was a trick pass from fullback Bronco Nagurski to halfback Red Grange, the "Galloping Ghost" from Wheaton.

The contractors have found coins, old tools, notes with a name and date, and other things left on purpose.

"Some of it, the tradesmen will just stick things in the wall instead of a garbage can," says McElligott, who discovered some neat 1927 cereal advertisements on posters inside a ceiling of his old Mundelein house that once was a speak-easy.

"It was just stuff considered throwaway at the time," McElligott says. "I want to find a place in my house to display them."

We'd like to display some of the things McElligott and Smith found inside our house. But what we'd really like is if they find a secret stash of gold and silver dollars from 1890.