Elgin Garden Club celebrates 100 years

It was 1916.

In France, World War I battles were raging at Verdun and along the Somme.

In Elgin people who drove by the 900 block of West Highland Avenue in their Model Ts or their horse-drawn carriages often stopped to admire the elegant three-story Wing Mansion. But they couldn't quite forget that morning, 19 years before, when the Watch City's favorite society woman had burned to death standing at the window in its attic.

And at a similarly cushy home a group of other "prominent" Elgin wives met to form a "garden club," with the goal of encouraging people to make this humming industrial city more beautiful.

The current owners of the Wing Mansion, Maureen McWaid and her husband Steve Thoren, opened their museum-like home last week to more than 20 members of the Elgin Garden Club, celebrating its 100th anniversary. And to record what the club has accomplished during that century, member Cherie Murphy has written a history of the club called "100 Years and Growing," which is available for $20 at the Elgin History Museum.

Murphy, who worked as the city's community engagement coordinator before she retired last year, said the club began when "in 1916 a core group of about five or six women noticed that garden clubs were becoming popular on the East Coast. There was one on the North Shore. Elgin was a very prominent town but many cities had set aside more beautiful public areas and they wanted to do the same thing in Elgin."

In the beginning

The first club president was Mrs. George Hunter, wife of the president of the Elgin National Watch Co. (In keeping with social standards of 1916, women usually went by their husbands' names.) Other founding members included Mrs. Bosworth, whose blue mansion can be seen along West Highland Avenue today just a few blocks west of the Wing Mansion that the 2016 club members are scheduled to tour Friday.

If the club had been founded a few decades sooner, it likely would have included Abbie Wing. As volunteer docents, including Police Chief Jeff Swoboda, led club members through the Wing Mansion, Thoren recalled how the home had begun as a farmhouse in about 1850 but was expanded to its present Queen Anne-style glory in several stages.

By 1891 it was the home of lawyer/businessman William Wing (donor of the land that became Wing Park) and his wife, a well-known former schoolteacher named Abbie. For a while their maid was one of Elgin's first black women, Ernie Broadnax's great-great grandmother. Thoren recalled how Broadnax, a retired U.S. Marine now in his 80s, broke into tears when he sat down in the little servant-quarters bedroom where his ancestor had slept.

Thoren and McWaid pointed out original details in the home, such as its "1890s intercom" speaking tube, through which the Wings could summon their servants three floors away. Lights were equipped to use either gas or electricity, since the city's electric generating station turned off every night from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.

But most of the home has been restored by McWaid and Thoren using authentic 1890s-style wallpaper and fixtures, supplemented by their own collections of everything from Depression glassware to historic photos, clocks, record players, radios and TVs.

Thoren noted that Abbie Wing herself met a brutal end in 1897. She and her husband were eating breakfast when they smelled smoke. The attic had been set afire by lightning. Abbie ran up to that attic to retrieve a hidden box of jewelry and mementos but was trapped when an iron stove tipped over onto the stairway. She was last seen alive standing at the attic window, refusing calls from people 30 feet below for her to jump out.

Through the years

Murphy said the garden club's main thrust has changed through the century along with the world around Elgin.

"The first project was to clean up the Elgin train station," she said. "The second was to get trash bins downtown. And one of our most noteworthy achievements was to put a real fountain in Fountain Square," as the traditional center of downtown Elgin is known.

In the late 1950s, plans to build the "Northwest Tollway" (Interstate 90) from Chicago through Elgin to Rockford threatened to pave over one-third of Trout Park's pristine woods. Murphy said club members fought hard against this routing, but finally lost the battle.

In the 1960s the club spearheaded beautification for the "civic center" (the new city hall, post office, appellate courthouse and library).

Murphy said the club now has 42 members and meets 10 or 11 times a year to discuss horticultural trends, plan benefit projects and tour interesting local gardens.

"Membership is by invitation only," Murphy said. "We want people who are genuinely involved in hands-on gardening, not just checkbook gardening." She said the club has no formal rule against men joining, but all active members are women.

The longest-lasting member, Virginia "Ginnie" Umberger, is 107 years old and joined the club in about 1956.

"Ginnie is our role model," Murphy said.

Elgin Garden Club upcoming events

To celebrate its 100th anniversary, the club offers two special lectures at Gail Borden Public Library, 270 N. Grove Ave.

• At 9:30 a.m. Friday, Laura Mueller from the Art Institute of Chicago will speak about the "Shakespeare gardens" that were popular in 1916. She also will speak about the paintings and plants that were popular in Shakespeare's time and beyond.

• At 3:30 p.m. Sept. 20, an employee of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, England, will discuss that institution's mission of "using the power of science and the diversity of gardens to provide knowledge, inspiration and understanding of why plants matter."

Reservations for the lectures are required. Visit gailborden.info/register, call (847) 429-4597 or sign up at the library.