Wilmette Public Library Local History Digital Collection

Robert D. Hall (1914- ) and Alice Freeman Hall (1916-) oral history

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Track 1, Transcript p. 1-3: Track 1, Transcript p. 1-3
Transcription: Robert D. and Alice Hall p.1 RA: What is your full name? Where do you live? RDH: I'm Robert D. Hall RA: Have you always lived in Wilmette? RDH: No, but I moved here a long time ago. RA: How long? RDH: In 1916. Our family moved here in 1916 from Zion, Illinois, where I was born. Zion is a community north of Waukegan. Maybe forty miles from here. RA: In Lake County? RDH: Yes, Lake County. We moved into a house at 913 Thirteenth Street, which at that time backed up against the North Shore Railroad and which is now gone and there is a fire station on the east side of the Northwestern tracks there now. RA: I see. Do you remember much about the community of Zion as it was? RDH: Not at that time, but I went back some years later and lived there for two or three years with my grandfather. RA: Oh, yes. RDH: So I got well acquainted with Zion and all my cousins and relatives who live up there. It was a town founded for religious purposes. The man who founded it and created Zion Industries which included a lace factory and a big bakery.... RA: And who was the man? RDH: That was Dowie. Later, after he passed on, Wilbur Glenn Robert D. and Alice Hall, cont. p.2 Voliva ran the church and the town and during his years he had a radio station. I wonder if I can remember. WCBD. RA: Oh, yes. RDH: And, of course, he would come on the air Sundays and preach all afternoon as I remember. RA: What was the name of the church? RDH: Oh, that was the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church of Zion. RA: Christian Catholic.... RDH: Christian Catholic Apostolic Church of Zion. RA: How did it differ from.... RDH: I wouldn't know all the details of that. My grandparents came to Zion in the 1900's like in 1902 and 1901. My mother's family came from Canada down here, from Ontario, because the grandmother in the family was ill. The Hall side of the family came from Vermont to be healed and after several years, the Hall family had no healing so the grandmother and most of the Halls went to California where weather and everything was supposed to be much easier on them. And my father had fallen in love with the Graham girl. He stayed, married, of course, and his brother stayed. Uncle Henry stayed - Henry Hall. And he raised his family there while the rest of the family went to California. The rest of them are out there. It was interesting a Robert D. and Alice Hall, cont. p.3 couple of years ago I was on a committee with a woman from Glencoe who was raised in Zion also and who knew my mother and is one of the few people who I've met who knew my mother. Her name is Mary Ferry. I'll bet she could tell you a lot about that little town. I think what I remember about Zion can be related to the Blue Laws and secondly to what we might now know as "progress" because the church officials would not allow the state highway people to pave Sheridan Road when it went through Zion so when you drove from Waukegan north you came to a point where you got into six or ten inches of mud and poor streets and that's what you had through Zion until, oh, I suppose in the late 1918, 1920. No, it had to be even after that when they finally paved the state highway which was Sheridan Road. RA: For heaven's sake. RDH: So we remember that. RA: You didn't have any sewers either. RDH: They had no underground sewers, but the effluence was ll picked up by wagons and carried off somewhere. The area of entertainment, of course, there was absolutely nothing that happened on a Sunday up there. We weren't allowed to, there were no movies. They did not have a movie in Zion for many, many years after everybody else had a movie theatre of some kind.
Creators: Hall, Robert D., Interviewee; Hall, Alice Freeman
, Interviewee; Adler, Rhea Saul
, Interviewer
Media Type: Audio; Image; Text
Item Type: Audiocassettes
Description: Interview with Robert D. Hall and Alice Freeman Hall by Rhea Adler in Wilmette in winter 1977.

Abstract:

• His childhood in Zion, Illinois - Description of the community founded for religious reasons by Mr. Dowie
• Wilbur Glenn Voliva and radio station WCBD
• Hall family from Vermont to Zion "to be. healed" in 1902 -Most went on to California later but his father and uncle stayed
• "Blue laws" - No sewers - No movies - Owned all industries -Zion Bakery - Lace factory - Power plant
• Uncle Charley moves family to Alamo, Michigan about 1920 -Family and household goods in two boxcars - Head of household drives team of horses from Zion to Alamo -Spends first night in Wilmette, horses spend night on Ridge in a lumberyard - Goes through Chicago via Western Avenue and horses spend second night in lumberyard and driver slept in wagon - Took two weeks to reach Alamo, Michigan - Had a celery farm ~ Strawberries
• Return to Wilmette - Lived in various areas - 4th Linden area
• "West of tracks" - Community attitudes toward different locale - Harms Woods trolley - Two years University of Alaska
• Alice Hall's description of Mrs. Freeman's (her mother's) grade school board tenure - Purchase of Harper school land - Mother's Quaker upbringing in Richmond, Indiana
• Graduated Earlham College - Volunteer year in Puerto Rico
• Discussion of philosophy of Wilmette/ Winnetka schools - PTA -Woman's Club - Arden Shore Girl Scouts - Park Ridge School for Girls - All activities of Elizabeth Freeman - Father on faculty of Armour Institute (forerunner of Illinois Institute of Technology) for 42 years
• Present activities of the Halls - She, New Trier High School teacher - He, in audio-visual school supplies – Avedex in Skokie
Place of Publication: Wilmette, Illinois
Date of Original: 1977
Subject(s): Teachers
Oral histories
Wilmette (Ill.) -- Residents
Personal Name(s): Hall, Alice Freeman ; Hall, Robert D.
Local identifier: R977.31 HA
Language of Item: English
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Copyright Holder: Wilmette Public Library
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Wilmette, Il 60091
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