Retiree Frank Regan isn`t living in the past, but he says he thinks he probably would be comfortable there-at least in the past of Palatine Township. Regan, 71, volunteers about 20 hours a week as an archivist at the Historical Library and Museum of Palatine Township.
”I`m not much of an `antiquer.` My interests are primarily in this room,” he says, sitting in the second-floor reference room lined with glass- paneled wooden shelves. They are filled mostly with books and documents.
The social patterns and interactions of the past interest Regan far more than the minutiae of daily life. The fruits of his labor are housed in the small room that usually is bypassed by the groups of schoolchildren touring the museum. Nevertheless, the work is not confining, he says.
The bits of information filed here have been coaxed by Regan from local businesses, requisitioned from the government and sometimes sought from individuals. They form a picture of land acquisition and settlement in the township from its earliest days.
Regan talks about events around the 1850s as if they were today`s news.
”There was a fair bit of (land) speculation in Palatine,” he says. It was rare for people to invest in the stock market. ”There weren`t that many investment vehicles.”
The biggest land speculator in Palatine and Barrington Townships was David Root, a Congregational minister who lived in New Haven, Conn., he says. Root bought the 840 acres in Palatine Township and 1,100 acres in Barrington Township land through a lawyer in Elgin who was performing a similar service for others. The minister bought the land for $1.25 an acre in 1846 and sold it piece-meal for an average $5 an acre through 1860, Regan says. Root never lived in Palatine, and he sold the land to speculators who subdivided and resold it.
”That`s the kind of a story that`s an important part of my kind of research,” he says. ”It`s one of those things where you get interested in a subject-in this particular case, land development in Palatine.”
The more he investigated, he says, the more interested he became. He hopes to publish a book about Root, whose land acquisitions and life story he has traced through public records, Regan says.
Regan was born in Gloucester, Mass. Trained as a chemist, he has lived in Palatine since 1951, when A.B. Dick, a Chicago copy machine firm, bought the company he worked for in the Boston area.
”I got into the historical society when it was first founded” in the 1950s, he says. His wife, Mary Louise, is a genealogist. ”We became local history buffs as a result of that interest in genealogy.”
He became a member of the Palatine Village Board about five or six years after arriving in town and served for eight years, he says. He also served eight years on the library board.
Regan and his wife have four grown children: two daughters, who live in Woodstock and Niantic, Conn., and two sons who live in Naperville and Indianapolis.
What Regan cannot call from memory can be researched on index cards that tell where to find specific information the library has on file from newspaper clippings, photographs or other records. He devised the system to catalog the information.
Tracking down information often sends him out of the building, he says. For instance some engineering surveyors told him about a group of summer cottages that were moved out of Deer Grove Forest Preserve and into surrounding communities in the 1920s. These were probably built, he says, to be used by tuberculosis patients because it was believed that they benefited from fresh air.
”They were real crude-side walls halfway up, and then there were screens.” There was no indoor plumbing, he adds.
Forest Preserve officials moved the cottages because squatters had begun living in them, he says. A group of Swedes made a small subdivision of some of the cottages in Teonia Woods, now a part of Rolling Meadows, he says.
Two families purchased lots by Quentin Road in the early 1930s, he says.
”So I`ve been to visit both of those families” to verify the details of the property`s history, he says.
One cottage is still standing, while another has been torn down. He`ll write up his results for publication in the society`s newsletter to fill in one bit of the township`s history.
Information has come from many places: government reports, and records of a now-defunct funeral home and volunteer fire companies, for example.
Some data, such as genealogical information on townsfolk collected by a charter member of the historical society, the late Florence Parkhurst, cannot be documented. ”That drives me up the wall,” he says.
Some genealogical records particularly interest him.
One is a large black book containing names and dates of birth, baptism and death that have been recorded with a quill pen in a flowing hand-the operative phrases in German: ”Geburt” for birth, for example. The book contains photocopies of records from St. John`s United Church of Christ in Palatine.
The book provides an important record of the first families who remained in the area, he says. The earliest settlers, initially from the East, were accustomed to moving on. The German families, who were interested in land that was already developed, moved in after them, Regan says. In the mid-1800s, development meant simply that the ground had been broken and perhaps a house had been built.
Acquiring the records from St. John`s was an encouraging precedent, he says, because sometimes holders of such records have a proprietary attitude toward them. He says he believes that other institutions now may be more willing to share their historical records.
In addition to his research for the museum`s archives, Regan does other jobs when there is a need. ”He`ll do anything you ask,” says Marilyn Pedersen, the museum`s director, noting that he has given talks to Kiwanis and Lions groups, hung wallpaper and done carpentry.
”He`s just always so helpful and willing to part with his knowledge,”
adds Carolyn Mangold, who is president of the historical society.
Regan also was involved in fundraising for about $200,000 that was used to refurbish the museum, at 224 E. Palatine Rd. The work was done between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s. The society bought the former private residence, which was built in 1873, for $48,000 in 1976, Pedersen says. Regan knocked on doors and solicited everywhere, she says. The museum is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Although the society has no acquisition plans, it recently purchased about an acre of prairie in Palatine from a builder who was planning to develop it, Mangold says. It is one of the few original prairies in the state, she says, and will remain so.
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The Historical Library and Museum of Palatine Township offers group tours and pamphlets describing walking tours of historic buildings in Palatine Township. The museum is open 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesdays and 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Thursdays and Sundays. For more information, call 991-6460.
