Today's families have much in common with founding fathers

They were the original newcomers to Naperville.

Most of us today are newcomers to town. We are 21st-century suburban families, but we have a lot in common with the 19th-century pioneer families who founded our city.

Listening to local author and historian Kate Gingold, you discover we have more in common with the Naper and Murray families than you'd think.

Gingold authored and published a children's chapter book titled "Ruth by Lake and Prairie," a work of historical fiction that tells true stories of Naperville's 1831 founding.

In the book, Gingold focuses on the real 12-year-old Ruth Murray, niece of Joe Naper, to tell of the 13 families who boarded a small two-masted schooner in Ashtabula, Ohio, to sail the Great Lakes to the swampy little town of Chicago, and then walked three days alongside wagons to found Naperville.

Gingold loves the research and the stories.

"The research, it's like CSI," she says, referring to the television show. "Finding all these details, all these clues.

"All these little towns (in this region) are having anniversaries. They all have interesting stories," Gingold said, noting that Ruth Murray, an original Napervillian, once went with her friend Harriet Warren, an original Warrenville resident, on a social call to welcome a new neighbor, Orinda Wheaton.

So today's custom of visiting the new family in the subdivision to say hello has proud roots from our earliest days. This summer, when you ring the doorbell of a new neighbor, think of Ruth, Harriet and Orinda.

Children and families were part of Naperville's founding, and children and families define Naperville today. The catalyst for Gingold's book was a search though Naperville's libraries for local history for kids.

Gingold's husband was on a 175th anniversary committee in Naperville then and, before he went to a meeting, she went to the children's section to see if she could supply him with some quick, interesting facts.

She didn't find much, but the seed of "Ruth by Lake and Prairie" was planted.

"With all the children in this town," Gingold says, "I thought we needed a book for children."

Local school kids also helped Gingold market-test a draft of an early chapter. What worked? What was confusing?

"The children helped me quite a bit," Gingold says, and she thanks them in her foreword.

With the book now in hard-back and paperback by her own publishing company, Gingold enjoys hearing from all the kids.

"I've been pleasantly surprised to find boys enjoying it as much as girls," she says.

Gingold currently is writing the story of the founding families' subsequent year here and the Black Hawk War, in which Ruth's older brother, Ned, was a soldier.

Gingold uncovered long-forgotten facts, adding new material to Naperville's history.

For example, Joe Naper was not living in Ashtabula, Ohio, at the time, but in Pomfret, N.Y., near Dunkirk, southwest of Buffalo. He began the journey here on his schooner, The Telegraph, before picking up extended family in Ashtabula and heading for Chicago and finally Naperville.

Part of the reason I personally like our town's history is that my first job out of college was near Ashtabula. I was a reporter for a daily paper in Painesville, Ohio, and occasionally covered an Ashtabula story. The name of that newspaper? The Telegraph.

So like those original seafaring pioneers, I started on The Telegraph near Ashtabula, and after a long, circuitous journey, wound up in Naperville. Adding to our historical connection is the fact my husband graduated from high school near Dunkirk, N.Y.

Among Gingold's new discoveries is an 1896 newspaper clipping that quotes Henry Graves, who was a 10-year-old in a family on Naper's schooner in 1831. Henry said it was his father, Dexter Graves, who convinced brothers Joe and John Naper to come to Illinois.

The Graves family, worn out from the rough ride on the Great Lakes, got off the boat in Detroit and walked the rest of the way.

"The ship was an untried and poor thing," Henry quoted his father as saying.

But it wasn't. By 1831, The Telegraph had been in service for several years.

"(The Graves) weren't good sailors," Gingold surmises. At any rate, they stayed in Chicago.

Joe and John Naper, like their father, were shipbuilders and Great Lakes sea captains. Dunkirk, N.Y. , is on the water, as is Ashtabula, Ohio.

Joe and John's parents were among those who founded Ashtabula in about 1800. By 1831, when they boarded the ship and cast off for points west, Ashtabula was a thriving and viable town.

"Then they moved to Illinois and started over," Gingold says. "These were people who knew how to build communities."

Like us.

• Cheryl Stritzel McCarthy moved to Naperville in 1999 with her husband and daughters. E-mail her at otbfence@hotmail.com. Find out about Gingold's book at ruthbylakeandprairie.com.