Sydney Weedon Templeton (1894-1994) oral history: Wilmette Public Library Local History Collection

Sydney Weedon Templeton (1894-1994) oral history

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Track 1

ST: Templeton-and the Sydney is spelled SYD. 

RA: And where did you live in Wilmette? 

ST: We lived on the corner of 5th and Gregory, with the house facing 5th street. 

RA: And when did you come to Wilmette? 

ST: We came in August of ... 

RA: And you were how old? 

ST: Ten months RA: Do you wish to go on from there? And where are you now living? 

ST: In Scarsdale, New York. 

RA: Do you wish to go on from there and tell us about your coming to Wilmette and why you came? 

ST: Well, my father and mother were living in Chicago on the north side where I was born and which became Lincoln Park a little later on. So I was born in the zoo. It wasn't Lincoln Park at the time. And it wasn't a very good part of Chicago to live in, and they had me and my elder sister, and my father wanted to get out, where he could have a garden and things like that, which he did, later on. A very big garden. 

RA: This is very interesting. Did your father work in Illinois􏰀in Wilmette? 

ST: No, he worked at the People's Gas Company, which is directly opposite and always was the Museum 

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of Art. 

RA: On Michigan Avenue? 

ST: On Michigan Avenue. Worked there all his life. 

RA: For heaven's sake! And how many were in your family? 

ST: There were 7 of us. My elder sister, who was my father's child, myself, Winifred, Hardy, Dorothy, Vivian, and Georgiana, who was born when I was 7 years old, and had left high school. 

RA: Then I assume you went to New Trier? 

ST: I certainly did. 

RA: In what year? 

ST: 1907 to 1910. 

RA: So New Trier had been started 6 years before, I believe, was their first graduating class. 

ST: Might be. I wouldn't know. 

HA: Ella Butz was in that class and gave her class pin to the historical society. 

ST: Oh, how nice. 

RA: And this is...I believe--Well, we will let you go on with your anecdotes, because you have so many and they are so good. 

ST: Well, our house was built by a little carpenter who lived across the street and built the house he was living in. Later, when we got to be a big family my father added on to it at the back, 

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ST: a great big playroom for the children, big kitchen for mother, the kitchen becoming the dining room and so forth. At the time that I remember, the streets were unpaved. And later on they were paved with brick. But the very first motor cars that used to come down Hill Street and turn up 5th, tore great holes in the gravel, and the dust on Sundays was simply terrible. I am sure they weren't going more than 25 miles an hour but we thought they were going 100! The house was completely surrounded by fields, in which we were allowed to wander as far as Isabella Street, which was then Evanston, and as far as the railroad at the back, which is now the elevated line tracks, came out to a place called Llewelyn Park. Three trains in the morning, and three at night. And that is one of the most precious memories, because we learned to know all the wildflowers. The most beautiful things grew there, gentians, and things that now the florists sell. But to us they were wildflowers. And we picked hazelnuts, and Mother of course, would tell us everything, All about these different flowers and plants and things, and I am sure that it was there that I learned to love the crows, which I still love, incidentally, because they were part of the picture of the fields. There had actually been an abattoir, down there at Isabella, there was a great trench, and the 

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ST: carcasses had been thrown into the trench, and it was a fascinating spot because there were all kinds of varmints. Well, there were all kinds of skulls, of animals, bones and things like that. It seems incredible when you think of it. RA: Was it where the butchers took their excess? 

ST: As I understand it, they did, you know, the butchering right there. There wasn't a... 

RA: Oh, right there at the abattoir. 

ST: That's what I always understood. But that was gone, by the time we...

Creators:

Templeton, Sydney Weedon, 1894-1994, Interviewee

Adler, Rhea Saul, 1906-1990

, Interviewer

Media Type:

Audio

Image

Text

Item Type:

Audiocassettes

Description:

Interview with Sydney Weedon Templeton by Rhea Adler in June, 1976.

ABSTRACT:
Locale of childhood from 1895 presently lives in Scarsdale, NY

Family lived in Wilmette Father commuted to Chicago from Llewelyn Park Station

House built for Weedon family by a local carpenter, surrounded by fields, unpaved streets

First motor cars on Hill St. (now Maple)

Wild flowers bloomed profusely then

Cows, abattoir on Isabella; Horse-drawn carts and carriages

Grocery orders taken in person - delivered later the same day

Laundry man injured by a run-away horse

Mother Weedon's school --Public school routes traveled, all wooded, wooden sidewalks, spring wild flowers grew under them, walked

High School at New Trier - rode trolley or bicycled

Typhoid fever, dress alterations, Anniversary, gardening, chickens, ducks, rabbits, root cellar, baking

Swimming in Lake Michigan

Reading Elbert Hubbard - bookbinding

Oil lamps - gas lights - mantles, electricity

Art, Hull House - Jane Addams --"The Cow" , framing, Van Gogh, Nova Scotia, Ginger Hill

Amy and husband, botanists; Dorothy and husband - trip to visit sisters

Winifred Weedon - Vivian Weedon

Carleton Washburne, Winnetka system - book publishing

Victoria's jubilee,Father's trip to England - his mother grew up at Court - Hardy
family

Place of Publication:

Wilmette, Illinois

Date of Original:

June, 1976

Subject(s):

Oral histories
Templeton, Sydney Weedon, 1894-1994

Local identifier:

R977.31 TE

Language of Item:

English

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