Strange it must have been, after leaving behind the ugly little town of Chicago, to come upon vast stretches entirely covered with a coarse grass that varied in height from 18 inches on the uplands to 9 feet in the lowlands, that bore brilliantly colored flowers at one stage and at another was yellow and resembled young wheat.
”Du Page County Guide” (1948), describing settlers` first look in the 1830s.
Doesn`t sound like much of a pot-boiler, does it? And yet, this little book, the ”Du Page County Guide,” finally published in 1948, was the subject of enough controversy to keep it off the book racks and out of schools and libraries for almost 10 years.
In fact, one of the book`s would-be sponsors, a County Board supervisor, declared it was ”filled with scurrility . . . a story of adultery, rape and kidnaping . . . fit for nothing except guttersnipes.”
Wait a second. What gives here? Was something really so rotten in the county of Du Page?
”No,” said Marion Knoblauch-Franc, editor of the guide. From the vantage point of 40 years, she now is able to look back on the controversy and see the humor, the outrageousness, of allowing the pages of a book about ”a quiet county where nothing ever happened” to yellow before they even got to the bindery.
”I thought it was a terrible waste,” said Knoblauch-Franc, her hazel eyes flashing determination. ”I decided I was not going to let this project go down the drain.”
A little history. The 288-page guide, underwritten by the Du Page County Board and prepared by the Work Projects Administration`s Federal Writers`
Project, was originally planned for publication in 1939, during the celebration of the county`s 100th birthday.
With a staff of roughly 15 Chicago-area writers, most of them suffering with the rest of the country through the waning years of the Great Depression, Knoblauch-Franc organized and painstakingly edited more than a year of intensive research, much of it done in the field.
”The relief workers (her staff) worked for about $85 a month,” she said. ”We were all happy to have the job.”
In fact, the Writers` Project was one of four massive cultural aid projects devised to keep creative artists from standing in the soup lines. Actors, musicians, artists and writers, including Studs Terkel, Saul Bellow, Nelson Algren and Richard Wright, threw themselves into the Writers` Project, put to work because, as WPA head Harry Hopkins explained, ”they`ve got to eat just like other people.”
With little money but a wealth of talent, guides were published for every state, most large cities and selected counties, provided those counties could provide financial backing. The guides included history, geography, suggested motor tours and profiles of major cities and villages.
Lying among the broad, rolling hills of the southern half of Du Page County is its oldest town, Naperville, where time-worn houses and work buildings call forth the adjective ”quaint.” To wander its streets is to live for an hour in the past, or to be transported to an inland New England village . . . Within leaning walls lie many museum pieces, some in use, some being preserved with that reverence for things old often found among those who live in small towns with a past.
To the motorist driving through its curving streets or the visitor alighting at its neat little railroad station, Hinsdale makes its character instantly plain simply by its street scenes. Almost all of its residential buildings are single-family houses in the Georgian, Colonial, English, Tudor, French provincial or Spanish architectural traditions beloved of well-to-do Americans since Victorian days. Radiating well-being, they symbolize security and a leisurely way of life which for half a century have formed the leitmotif of Hinsdale.
Sounds like it was written by someone who has lived in Du Page all her life. But in truth, Knoblauch-Franc was a big-city girl who grew up in Cook County and knew almost nothing of the western suburbs. ”I may have been there once or twice,” she said, unapologetically. ”I had heard of Hinsdale and Elmhurst and Wheaton. But I didn`t know anything about them. It was an assignment.”
This is a woman who doesn`t fool around when it comes to assignments. Now 79 years old, she is knee-deep in research for another book. She says she is overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of it and has a momentary case of writer`s block.
You don`t believe her. You get the feeling she could edit the Encyclopaedia Britannica without trepidation. A researcher to her bones, a stickler for detail, a journalist committed to getting it right.
”She would never let a sentence be published that wasn`t perfect,”
said Julius Echeles, a Chicago lawyer who worked with Knoblauch-Franc on the Writer`s Project. ”She went into details almost beyond necessity. She was not a nitpicker, just incredibly precise. She never wanted to complete a project.”
Two stunning examples: There was a Naperville gristmill from pioneer days. In front stood a historic marker with a plaque. ”Someone told me, `Oh, that`s not the plaque from that mill, that`s not right,` ” said Knoblauch-Franc. ”I asked one of the field workers to chip off a tiny piece of stone from the back and sent it to the Field Museum. They confirmed, proved, that it was the stone made for that mill.”
Then someone else told her-several people, in fact-that there had been a Lincoln-Douglas debate in West Chicago. They even erected a plaque that read, ”Site of the Lincoln-Douglas Debate.”
”Well, the Lincoln-Douglas debates were very famous, and I had never heard of one in West Chicago,” said Knoblauch-Franc, ”and neither had anyone else.” Naturally suspicious and highly educated-at Wellesley College (in music) and Northwestern University (where she took night classes at the Medill School of Journalism)-Knoblauch-Fran c decided to do a little detective work. ”We looked up the train schedules for that day (Aug. 28, 1858). We knew where Lincoln was the day before (during the famous Lincoln-Douglas Freeport debate) and the day after. We proved Lincoln could not have been in West Chicago when they said he was.” In the book, the site, despite its marker, is referred to only as the ”Site of the Stephen Douglas Speech.”
”She was always in a tizzy about getting something out on deadline,”
said Echeles, ”always behind because of the preciseness of her work.”
”We were given a year to complete the guide,” said Knoblauch-Franc, her no-nonsense attitude brooking no reproach. ”It took a little longer than that.” How much longer? ”Several more months.”
The first cabins were constructed of logs fitted closely together and mortised with mud. The single window, placed high in the wall for safety, was hung with gunny sacks or covered with a lard-greased paper. In winter, it was often boarded over. Nails were scarce, so wooden pegs were used instead . . . It has been said that whatever else he might lack, the Yankee immigrant never arrived without what he considered the indispensable articles: a plough, a bed, a barrel of salt meat, a supply of tea and molasses, a Bible, and a wife.
So what about the raping, pillaging and plundering? The stuff that then-County Board Supervisor George C. Potts of Lombard, the man appointed to read and report on the final proofs, found so damaging that he ”wouldn`t have it in my house for fear the children would get hold of it”?
Knoblauch-Franc, a wry smile twisting her mouth, explained: ”Naperville had won by one vote over Wheaton in the election for county seat. Some of the people in Wheaton were so outraged that they stormed the (Naperville)
courthouse, stole the records and, de facto, Wheaton became county seat. We called that chapter `The Rape of the Records.` ”
Scandalous. But that`s not all. There were a few more skeletons to be dragged out of Du Page`s closet.
The Chicago Daily News, reporting Jan. 12, 1940, on the rejection of the
”Du Page County Guide” by a 15-to-5 vote of the County Board, said, ”In their months of delving into county records, the WPA writers turned up accounts of sensational trials held in the county. One of these was a divorce case, tried at Naperville . . . involving a prominent Chicagoan who had sought a change of venue. His wife was the daughter of an eastern railroad magnate. . . . Elsewhere, the book refers to the slot-machine problem, gangster killings . . . and to a St. Paul kidnaper`s hideout in Bensenville. These facts, to which Mr. Potts` report objected, were summed up with a paragraph extolling Du Page for having preserved its sober character despite the nearness to Chicago.”
The article ended by saying that the text, ”endorsed as to style by an Elmhurst clergyman and as to content by a high school teacher who has made a hobby of county history, will never reach the bindery.”
The headline in the Daily News read, ”Du Page Sees Its History, Votes Not To Reveal It.” But the author of that article and the writer of the headline obviously never met Marion Knoblauch-Franc.
Only 29 years old, she was already something of a force to be reckoned with. Her staff had spent more than a year of their lives on the project, and she refused to accept what was happening.
Somehow, she decided, she would get the book published. Having met countless Du Page residents and business people on her many research excursions, she went door-to-door for months, looking for backing. ”The book already had bad publicity, and the question was, Who else besides the County Board would be interested enough to sponsor it?” she said.
With time slipping by all too quickly and no sponsor found, a new problem arose, one intolerable to a woman committed to accuracy: The book was becoming dated.
”I spent I don`t know how many days and nights-months, really-trying my best to fix it. I had to physically change the page proofs, dropping in new paragraphs. I had to fix the driving maps, too, because some of the points of interest had changed.”
Years went by. Finally, fed up with the lack of response, Knoblauch-Franc decided on a financially risky, somewhat radical course of action: She would pay to have the book published herself.
”I took a chance on it, spent my own money. And I sent out press releases to major libraries all over the country.”
Was she crazy? Having survived the Depression, why was she spending almost a thousand dollars of her own money on a book nobody wanted? ”It was something I wanted to do,” she said simply.
Soon after, Irving Ruby, owner of Ruby`s Department Store in Elmhurst, agreed to become the book`s distributor. Nine years after the expected publication date, it finally came off the presses. It was 1948.
These are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name
The Prairies. I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness . . .
-William Cullen Bryant – Frontispiece, ”Du Page County Guide”
Said Frederic Babcock in the Chicago Sunday Tribune (1948): ”No recent book that I know of has had a more curious history than this one. . . . Now that it has been published at last, and in reading it, one wonders what the rumpus was about . . . it stands as a highly worthwhile part of the American Guide series. . . . Its editor, Marion Knoblauch of Chicago, is entitled to whatever credit she cares to claim for having fought for it, in the face of many reversals.”
Said H.A. Berens, then president of the Du Page County Historical Society: ”The life of every adult residing in the county could be
delightfully enriched through reading and occasionally browsing in the book.” The book sold more than 500 copies. Knoblauch-Franc didn`t make a dime, but recouped her losses. To this day, she seeks no applause. She had an assignment, and she was determined to finish it.
”The one word that comes to mind when I think of her is dignity,” said Echeles. ”She is a lady of great dignity.”
After her triumph, Knoblauch-Franc became a respected editor for music publications. Now, having come full circle, she has a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to write a book about another WPA cultural project, the Federal Music Project.
She looks back on the Writers` Project ”Du Page County Guide” with some satisfaction and a sense of detachment as a project long finished. She remembers the beauty of Du Page County, glorying in its antique buildings and many bucolic settings. It never occurred to her to move to Du Page; she will always be a Chicago girl. But the subject consumed almost a decade of her adult life, and she is at peace with the result.
How did she feel about the belated publication, the sale of the book to libraries as far away as New Brunswick, and the subsequent glowing reviews?
”I felt vindicated,” she said.”
