Rhea Saul Adler (1906-1990) oral history: Wilmette Public Library Local History Collection

Rhea Saul Adler (1906-1990) oral history

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RF: . . . '85. We are taping Rhea Adler at 401 3rd Street, Wilmette, IL. Rhea has been a resident of Wilmette for . . . how long?
 
RA: 53 years.
 
RF: 53 years. Okay, Rhea.
 
RA: Come August.
 
RF: Go ahead, Rhea.
 
RA: Well, you want . . .
 
RF: Let's start by you telling us where you were born and about your childhood and how you came to Wilmette.
 
RA: I was born in DeKalb County, Illinois, the fourth generation of my family to have lived in the town. And they came as original purchases of land. When my great-great-grandfather was--or my great-grandfather--was eleven years old, his mother later came and joined his family from the East. And she had had fourteen children and was a widow at the time she came. They had come from Massachusetts and had purchased the land at a dollar and a quarter, which was the price that most of the land, at that time, in the 1830s, was selling for. And it was shortly after . . . well, with the Indians. And the boys had been out here originally in the armed forces, as we say today "the military", and had been with Scott's army. And that was when cholera also was brought in from the East to Illinois, and there was a great cholera epidemic at that time. And I grew up, the first five years of my life, in DeKalb County, and Mr. Robertson, Bill Robertson at the library who's a volunteer also, has just written a book about the Woodstock-Sycamore Traction Company. And I was a child at that time when they were building that railroad, and I have a piece of the rail that Bill wants me to give to the Historical Society in Genoa [?], which I will do eventually. I'm using for a door stop now.
 
RF: [Laughs].
 
RA: And the wind from the East does come in my front door, and I love it. [Laughs.] Anyway, then when I was . . . before I had started to school, my father's father had died in Pennsylvania, and he had gone back for the funeral, and he decided to return to live there. So eventually, my mother and brother and I took the Pennsylvania railroad to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where we lived for two years. And I started to school in the Pennsylvania schools. And I had to be vaccinated for a successful vaccination for smallpox before I was allowed to enter school. But I apparently was immune before they vaccinated me because I never had a successful vaccination.
 
RF: It never took.
 
RA: Never took. And so they finally gave me a special bit of paper to offer to the school for admittance. So I spent my first two . . . part of my second year there. But at that time, the War was about to break out, World War I, that is. So my mother, brother, and I returned to Illinois, where my grandparents lived, my maternal grandparents. So, my mother had a set of Haviland china that was shipped back in a barrel, and it didn't come for months and months after we returned. And when they delivered it, we could hear the shards on the inside of it.
 
RF: It was broken?
 
RA: Every piece, but one dinner plate was left, and I have that now on my buffet. I remember it was one of the first times I saw my mother really cry. And it was quite an emotional experience to me, the fact I've remembered it all these years.
 
RF: And there was no way to replace it?
 
RA: No. My grandmother had a duplicate set in orchid and green, this was in pink. So when my mother died, my sister took my grandmother's set, and that was all right with me because I had things from my husband's side of the family. So anyway, we lived in the East, and that was quite an experience for a child of that age at that time. There are people today in my small home town who've never left it, haven't even been to Chicago. So, we did visit a maternal family reunion up in Nelson, Pennsylvania, which is just below the New York border, before we returned. My grandmother came to visit us, and we all went up there. And that was an experience because it was a large Scotch-Irish family that had come in the early 1800s, right after the Revolutionary War. To those parts, and they were a very close family. And all through my childhood, my mother's family had been very close. And one of the brothers of the previous generations had settled up in Winnebago County, Illinois, and another one had settled in DeKalb County. But several of them had come out at the same time, and so they, and all their children and the grandchildren, always got together annually. And that existed down--I remember my husband and my three children and I attended one in their very young childhood. They were still having them. And I have pictures that I had from that length of time. And they would recount stories of how they came. They would read letters that were written, and I was fascinated by the fact there were no envelopes. They were always folded. . .
 
RF: And sealed?
 
RA: And the corners were crossed and a seal was put on them, and they would be by courtesy or someone or they would have to buy a stamp, and usually they were 25 cents.
 
RF: Oh, that was a lot of money then.
 
RA: That was a lot of money, then. But those were the things that created my interest in history.
 
RF: Mmm hmm.
 
RA: And so when I eventually went to the University, American History was my major.
 
RF: Which school did you go to?
 
RA: I had one year at Lake Forest College and then the rest at University of Illinois.
 
RF: Champaign?
 
RA: Champaign. And that was an interesting period, too.
 
RF: When did you meet your husband Harry?

Fleischer, Regina

, Interviewer

Adler, Rhea Saul, 1906-1990

, Interviewee

Barnett, Amanda

, Transcriber

Media Type:

Audio

Text

Item Type:

Audiocassettes

Description:

Interview of Rhea Adler by Regina Fleischer at 401 3rd Street, Wilmette, IL, in 1985.

Notes:

Photograph of the first public library in Wilmette, Illinois

Place of Publication:

Wilmette, Illinois

Date of Original:

About 1985

Date Of Event:

About 1985

Subject(s):

Libraries
Oral histories
Wilmette Public Library
Adler, Rhea Saul, 1906-1990

Language of Item:

English

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