Addison’s history is
mostly unwritten
The public archives hold only 3 old photos of Addison. The rest are in attics, shoeboxes and the historical society. Help start the collection.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗The village was incorporated in 1884, at which time it had a population of 400. The community itself was originally named Dunkley's Grove after the settler Hezekiah Dunklee, and was renamed after a town in England or Addison, New York. In 1832, Winfield Scott built Army Trail Road on top of a Potawatomi trail in Addison, in order to allow 50 broad-tired wagons to fight Black Hawk and his warriors. In 1864, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod moved its teacher training to the village from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and established the Addison Teachers Seminary; it remained in Addison until 1913, when it was relocated to River Forest, Illinois, as Concordia Teachers College (now Concordia University Chicago). The town was also home to the Kinderheim home for children, which made up more than half its population prior to suburbanization.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowStart Addison’s collection
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Addison’s history is told.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewAddison postcard, c. 1900: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Addison
See all 8 →
Addison, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Orphan Home Festival Day trains (1892) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (6). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.