On 22 May 1855, a tornado developed in northeastern Illinois, killed at least four people and several farm animals, and damaged at least one home and barn. According to one of the most frequently referenced sources detailing the event, the 24 May 1855 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, a warm and humid day culminated in a funnel-shaped cloud that approached from the northwest and turned into a “terrific tornado,” lifting a home off its granite foundation and killing three of nine occupants “in the town of Jefferson […] near Jefferson Mills, 16 miles distant” between 1600 and 1700 CT (Fig. 1; Chicago Daily Tribune 1855b). The report also noted that the tornado tore away a side of a barn, causing it to collapse and kill a horse and three calves. Per eyewitness accounts, the storm also produced hail with a circumference as large as 22.9 cm (9 in.; approximately 7.4 cm, or 2.9 in., in diameter) prior to the tornado and may have eventually reached Chicago, Illinois, where hail was also reported on that day.
Recreation of the 24 May 1855 Chicago Daily Tribune account of the 22 May 1855 tornado (Chicago Daily Tribune 1855b).
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
Chicago was first organized as a town in 1833 near the Chicago River outlet into Lake Michigan. By 1855, the city had grown to cover just a few square miles (several square kilometers). In the following decades, multiple areas were annexed by the city, greatly expanding its boundaries. Because the boundaries of the town of Jefferson are now within the modern-day limits of the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Chicago (Fig. 2), the 22 May 1855 tornado has long been thought to be the first-known tornado to ever impact the modern city limits of Chicago. The U.S. Signal Corps, part of the U.S. War Department and predecessor to the modern-day National Weather Service, reported a tornado in “Jefferson, Cook County,” the same county in which Chicago resides, on 22 May 1855 (Finley 1882, p. 4). When the St. Louis Post Dispatch wrote an article documenting the history of tornadoes in the United States several days after a significant tornado in 1896, it mentioned the “earliest recorded tornado in Illinois” having occurred in “Jefferson and Cook Counties” on 22 May 1855 (St. Louis Post Dispatch 1896). More recent summaries of Chicago area tornadoes compiled by the National Weather Service and local media continue to list the 1855 tornado as the first to hit Chicago.
Map of township boundaries in portions of Cook and DuPage Counties in northeastern Illinois as of 1851, digitized from a map by Rees (1851). The modern-day city limits of Chicago are shown by light gray shading with the 1855 city limits in dark gray.
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
Little is known about the general weather conditions leading up to, or the path of, the 1855 tornado.1 In addition, confirming genealogical and death records prior to 1871 is difficult because records were destroyed when the Cook County courthouse burned down during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Recent digitization of historic newspaper articles, availability of genealogical information, and discovery of historic property maps provided an opportunity to fill in some of the missing details of this historic tornado. Ensuring the account of the 1855 tornado is correct was a goal of the staff at NWS Chicago not only to ensure storm data records are accurate, but also because information about tornadoes in the Chicago area is often sought out by the public, local media, and government officials (see “A modern approach to historical damage surveys” sidebar).
Review of known weather data
Although official weather maps for the United States were not prepared by the U.S. Signal Office of the War Department until January 1871, limited weather records do exist from army forts and public citizens dating back to the mid-1800s. Such data exist as part of the “19th Century Forts and Voluntary Observers Database,” or FORTS archive, which were digitized by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) as part of the Climate Database Modernization Program (Dupigny-Giroux et al. 2007; NCEI 2021). To provide a basic picture of the meteorological conditions leading to the 22 May 1855 tornado, weather records from the FORTS archive from numerous locations across the Midwest were downloaded and analyzed. Approximate weather maps were created that show temperature (reported in degrees Fahrenheit), wind direction, “force of the wind” (which appears similar to, but with different wind speeds than, the Beaufort scale; see Table 1), cloud cover, and in a few instances, dewpoint temperature (reported in degrees Fahrenheit).
Descriptions and velocities indicated for a given “force of the wind” (sometimes also referred to as “scale of wind”) on the Smithsonian Institution weather observer forms. Values in the source material were indicated in units of mi h−1. Values converted to m s−1 have been rounded to the nearest whole number.
At 0700 CT 22 May 1855, air temperatures were generally in the 70s Fahrenheit (21°–26°C) across northern Illinois with southerly or southwesterly winds ahead of a likely cold front stretching from central Wisconsin to central Iowa (Fig. 3). As evidenced by a change in temperature near a cyclonic change in wind direction, an area of low pressure likely existed along the front in eastern Iowa. By 1400 CT, weather observers across Illinois reported temperatures warming into the 80s and 90s Fahrenheit (27°–34°C) along with dewpoints increasing into the lower 70s Fahrenheit (21°–24°C) as the cold front and area of low pressure shifted eastward (Fig. 4). A newspaper account from Ottawa, Illinois, indicated temperatures starting at near 80°F (27°C) at 0700 CT and rising to 96°F (36°C) by 1200 CT (Ottawa Free Trader 1855b). Newspaper accounts from Kenosha, Wisconsin, indicated temperatures well into the 90s Fahrenheit (32°–37°C) for several hours (Kenosha Tribune and Telegraph 1855c,d), and later climatological data for Dubuque, Iowa, indicated a high temperature of 100°F (38°C), which became the warmest May temperature on record in Dubuque until it was broken in 1934 (Reed 1934, p. 34). Meanwhile, a temperature of only 69°F (21°C) was recorded along the Lake Michigan shore in Milwaukee with east winds, suggesting a lake breeze may have developed and was moving inland at the time of the report. Because a lake breeze may have been in close proximity to the tornado in question, it is possible that this boundary played a role in the development of the thunderstorm responsible for the severe weather in Cook County, though this is impossible to confirm given the data available. Cooler temperatures and a change in wind direction across northeast Iowa by 2100 CT suggested that the cold front had moved east toward the Mississippi River, by which time most observers had also noted a significant increase in cloud cover (Fig. 5).
Map of weather conditions reported at U.S. Army fort locations and by volunteer observers for the Smithsonian Institution valid at 0700 CT 22 May 1855. Meteorological records were collected from NCEI (2021). Temperatures and dewpoints were recorded in degrees Fahrenheit and winds were recorded as “force” value.
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
Map of weather conditions reported at U.S. Army fort locations and by volunteer observers for the Smithsonian Institution valid at 1400 CT 22 May 1855. Meteorological records were collected from NCEI (2021). Temperatures and dewpoints were recorded in degrees Fahrenheit and winds were recorded as “force” value.
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
Map of weather conditions reported at U.S. Army fort locations and by volunteer observers for the Smithsonian Institution valid at 2100 CT 22 May 1855. Meteorological records were collected from NCEI (2021). Temperatures and dewpoints were recorded in degrees Fahrenheit and winds were recorded as “force” value.
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
A modern approach to historical damage surveys
After an impactful hydrometeorological event such as a tornado, flood, or hurricane, NWS staff often collect information about the storm and related damage to determine exactly what occurred in an effort to better understand, predict, and ultimately warn for future hazards. Such reviews can span from hours to months depending on the complexity and scale of the event and include a number of data sources. For example, forecasters often review radar data from a storm that produced a swath of damaging winds to determine the hardest-hit areas, and analyze high-resolution satellite data taken before and after a storm in rural and sometimes difficult-to-access areas to identify areas where brief tornadoes may have occurred. NWS staff also often look at damage in person, talking with survivors and estimating wind speeds or water levels based on the damage that recently occurred. Reviewing historical weather events requires a different approach as normally used data sources may not be readily available. The process discussed in this article—examining historical news articles, unique sources of historical weather information, and creatively analyzing genealogical records—can provide the means to provide a more accurate record of other historical events, including those that are not explicitly meteorological in origin.
Review of historical newspaper articles
To gain a better understanding of the facts surrounding the 1855 tornado, newspaper articles digitized by the Library of Congress were examined for consistencies in witness accounts. Three articles in particular provided informative details about the tornado, including names of impacted families and structures that were damaged as well as general information about the damage caused by the storm. For example, in the 25 May edition of the New York Daily Tribune, the tornado was reported to have moved southeastward, briefly dissipated, and then reformed before damaging a barn and killing four people in a house “one mile [1.6 km] from the Illinois and Wisconsin Railroad” (New York Daily Tribune 1855). The four killed were listed as a wife, son, and two grandchildren of “Mr. Page.” Meanwhile, the 29 May edition of the New York Herald reported that the tornado moved slowly—about the speed of a person running—and that a “Mrs. Gillett” was injured in the house that was damaged by the tornado (New York Herald 1855). Additionally, the 26 May edition of the Ottawa Free Trader listed the names “H. Page” and “R.L. Wheeler” as being impacted by the storm but in the town of “Maine,” not Jefferson (Ottawa Free Trader 1855a). Additional articles discussing the 1855 tornado, as well as the full text of the mentioned articles, are provided in the appendix.
While several consistencies were reported among the three articles, differences in the location suggested that the widely presented account of the tornado may not have been correct. Where was Maine, and how many people actually died during the storm? Who were Mr. Page and R. L. Wheeler? And would the Illinois and Wisconsin Railroad provide clues as to where the tornado occurred?
Review of geographic data
In the accepted early accounts of the 1855 tornado, a single house was damaged in or near the town of Jefferson, “near Jefferson Mills [sic],” about 16 miles (25.7 km) from Chicago in Cook County, Illinois (Chicago Daily Tribune 1855b; New York Daily Tribune 1855; Finley 1882, p. 4). The town of Jefferson was assumed to refer to Jefferson Township—a subdivision of Cook County encompassing about 79 km2 (29 mi2)—or a small town bearing the same name within. A review of Cook County maps from 1851 to 1861 did not indicate a “Jefferson Mill” near Jefferson or within Jefferson Township (Rees 1851; Flower and Mendel 1861). Further, the names “Page” or “Wheeler” were not listed on property maps in Jefferson Township.
Using the information and clues from the newspaper articles, property maps were reviewed northwest of Jefferson Township, in and near Maine Township. Because reporters covering the aftermath of the tornado may have used the Illinois and Wisconsin Railroad2 to reach and interview survivors, the map search was focused on properties within 1–2 mi (1.6–3.2 km) of the railroad corridor.
Curiously, the name “RL Wheeler” was noted in Maine Township west of the Des Plaines River and the railroad. Immediately east of the Wheeler property, numerous plots were marked with “Jefferson” including a marker indicating “mill,” almost exactly 16 mi (25.7 km) to the northwest of Chicago (Fig. 6). The property and mill owned by the Jefferson family was distinct from Jefferson Township to the southeast. Des Plaines History Center research indicated that the Jeffersons were a prominent family in the area with a prosperous farm and mill, and their property may have been used as a local landmark. One of the early structures on Jefferson family property still exists today (Wolf 2012). Because both the Jefferson and Wheeler properties were located within the modern-day city limits of Des Plaines and not Chicago, the accepted location of the 1855 tornado was becoming tenuous.
(a) Map of Cook County township boundaries in 1851; the Illinois and Wisconsin Railroad as of 1855 (cross line) and 1-mi (1.6-km) buffer (gray line); and 16-mi (25.7-km) radius (gray dashed line) from the 1855 city limits of Chicago (gray shading); and (b) 1861 map of central and southwest Maine Township in Cook County, Illinois, by Flower and Mendel (1861). The R. L. Wheeler property is shaded in orange and the Jefferson properties are shaded in blue.
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
Review of genealogical data
To gain a better understanding of the families impacted by the tornado, searches of genealogical records were conducted on several websites. While searching records for “H. Page” on FamilySearch.com did not lead to any obvious results, seeking information for “R.L. Wheeler” uncovered information on Ransom Lee Wheeler who lived in Maine Township, Cook County, Illinois, at the time of the 1860 census (Fig. 7). In addition, Ransom was listed as residing with multiple individuals having the last name of Page (U.S. Census 1860). Reviewing the family tree of Ransom Lee Wheeler indicated that he was married to Sara Maria Page, who was the daughter of Hubert Joseph Page and Samantha Finch Page. The date of death of Samantha was listed as 22 May 1855—the date of the tornado. The family tree indicated that Ransom and Sara Wheeler had numerous children, each born about 2 years apart, except for a gap from 1851 to 1855. If this family tree was constructed based upon census records, there would be the possibility that children born after the 1850 census, but who died before the 1860 census, may not be listed.
Clippings from the 1860 U.S. Census showing “R. L. Wheeler” residing with family members named “Page” in Maine Township, Cook County, Illinois (U.S. Census 1860).
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
In addition to the single, consensus family tree that is constructed by users, FamilySearch.com also contains a pedigree resource file full of numerous small family tree snippets. submitted by anonymous users. which provides a means of digitizing genealogical data from a person’s records, such as family history books, written notes, and oral histories. User-submitted family trees can, however, have duplication of names found in separate family trees submitted by other users, and may include other errors. The pedigree resource file is one source of information used to help construct the main consensus family tree on FamilySearch.com.
Searching the user-submitted genealogies yielded anecdotal information about the Page/Wheeler family. In one genealogy submitted by an anonymous user to the pedigree resource file, a Samantha Page was indicated as “killed by a cyclone … in Des Plaines” on 22 May 1855, along with a Harriet Page Gillett (FamilySearch 2011a). Samantha’s daughter Sara Maria Wheeler, married to a Ransom Lee Wheeler, had a note indicating that “two of her tiny daughters died in the tornado that took others of the Page family” (FamilySearch 2011b). Three additional children were shown in this family tree: Lillian Livonia Wheeler, Eveline Louise Wheeler, and Charles Napier Wheeler. Lillian was born in 1852, Eveline was born in 1855, and both died on 22 May 1855. A note for Ransom Lee Wheeler indicates that their family moved from New York to Maine Township, Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1855, to a property in the “NE quarter of Section 29” (FamilySearch 2011c). Another child of Ransom and Sara, Mary Isabelle Wheeler, had a note that indicated that she was “lifted up into the air … during the tornado that killed several family members in 1855” (FamilySearch 2011d). From this information, an approximate family tree was reconstructed (Fig. 8). Although Des Plaines History Center records did not specifically mention a tornado, they were able to corroborate much of the historical and genealogical data found elsewhere. Unfortunately, no records were found indicating where victims of this tornado were buried (see “Farm burials” sidebar).
Approximate reconstructed family tree of the Page and Wheeler families based on newspaper accounts and genealogical research.
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
Farm burials
It is not known where the Wheelers and Pages buried their family members who died in the tornado. Town of Maine Cemetery in neighboring Park Ridge was not chartered until 1858, 3 years after the tornado occurred. In nineteenth-century rural America, it was common to bury deceased family members on the family’s own land in the absence of a nearby, organized cemetery. Given the rural character of Maine Township in the 1850s, it is likely that the Wheelers and Pages followed this practice after the tornado.
Just to the east of the Wheeler farm, the Hiram Jefferson farm included a family burial ground. When the Jeffersons arrived in Maine Township around 1840, Hiram’s father purchased a land claim along the Des Plaines River, south of Oakton Street, from a man named Dougherty. The Dougherty family burial ground stood on the land purchased by the Jeffersons and included the graves of Mrs. Dougherty and several Dougherty children. In 1910, local historian Clarence A. Earle and archaeologist and cartographer Albert F. Scharf surveyed the Dougherty burial ground and located six graves that they described as “hillocks” (Scharf 1915).
The Jeffersons initially buried several members of their family on the farm as well. According to Luther Jefferson’s daughter Betsy Irvin, the Jeffersons chose to move their family graves from the farm to Town of Maine Cemetery after it opened in 1858 (Des Plaines Journal 1956).
Discussion
How was the location of the 1855 tornado incorrectly listed in accepted and modern-day accounts of the storm? It appears that the property owned by the Jefferson family—which included a mill and general store—was confused for the town of Jefferson in Jefferson Township. The Jefferson family’s property was shown as adjacent to and east of the Page/Wheeler property in Maine Township on historical maps. Considering the consistencies in accounts in historical newspaper articles, genealogical records, and historical property maps, it seems exceptionally unlikely that there were two tornadoes that separately impacted the Wheeler property in Maine Township and Jefferson Township farther to the southeast. Moreover, initial newspaper articles indicated that the tornado occurred 16 mi (25.7 km) from Chicago. The town of Jefferson—modern-day Jefferson Park in Chicago—sits just 9 mi (14.5 km) away from the 1855 center of Chicago. This discrepancy was apparently missed in multiple newspaper articles and discussions in the decades that followed.
Additional research was conducted at Chicago’s Harold Washington Library by reviewing microfilm records of all Chicago newspapers published at the time of the 1855 tornado, which includes not only the Chicago Daily Tribune, but also the Chicago Weekly Times and the Daily Democratic Press. Although records indicate that the Chicago Journal was also published at the time, no microfilm records were available. In the Daily Democratic Press, the first article about the tornado was on 24 May 1855, which mentioned “a whirlwind passed over the town of Maine … taking in its course the house of Mr. H. Page” (Daily Democratic Press 1855a). An article written the following day, 25 May, provided significantly more detail, including that it was raining at the time of the tornado, with hail just prior, and that the “force of the whirlwind was lost soon after passing Mr. Page’s house” (Daily Democratic Press 1855b). It also indicated that debris found along the track of the tornado suggested that additional buildings may have been impacted. A follow up article published on 29 May indicated that Harriett Gillett died from her injuries on the evening of 25 May, 3 days after the tornado (Daily Democratic Press 1855c). In the Chicago Weekly Times, the first mention of the tornado was in the following week’s edition, on 31 May, where eyewitness accounts of the tornado’s movement were provided. An eyewitness “at O’Plain … about four o’clock” described the tornado “a few miles to the west” and indicated that it moved to the southeast (Chicago Weekly Times 1855a). Lightning was noted in the vicinity of the tornado as it moved “in a circular direction … through a segment of about forty-five degrees,” after which it briefly dissipated before reforming a few minutes later and moving back to the northwest “over almost precisely the same path as before” and making it almost halfway back to the starting point. It was also noted that the house of Mr. Page was “about a mile [1.6 km] south of O’Plain Station,” likely referring to the Illinois and Wisconsin Railroad stop at the Des Plaines River (present-day Des Plaines; see “Des Plaines in the 1850s” sidebar). The article also described the hail that occurred with the storm, indicating that a conductor of a passenger train on the Illinois and Wisconsin Railroad “picked up a hail stone at O’Plain Station and carried it in the cars to the Fox River” about 20 mi (32 km) away, at which point the hail was “still larger than a hen’s egg” (approximately 5 cm, or 2 in., in diameter). A follow-up article published on 7 June 1855 discussed storm damage in Waupun, Wisconsin, which also occurred sometime on 22 May 1855, as well as damage to Juneau, Wisconsin, about 24 km (15 mi) south of Waupun, which supposedly occurred on 21 May. A review of Wisconsin newspapers available from the Library of Congress digital collection (the Kenosha Tribune and Telegraph and the Mineral Point Tribune) have no mention of rain in Mineral Point or in the Kenosha area on 22 May, but do mention that rain and nondamaging hail occurred in the Kenosha area early on 23 May. The Ottawa Free Trader did not report any rainfall occurring between 22 and 24 May 1855, but did mention the very hot conditions of 22 May and the cooling trend through 24 May (Ottawa Free Trader 1855b). Owing to the possible uncertainty in published dates, it appears possible that either a single storm or storm cluster moved to the south and southeast along the lake breeze throughout the early morning and daytime hours of 22 May, or instead that a few separate storms may have formed along this boundary. In general, the other Chicago newspapers published on 22 May 1855 confirmed most of the important details already determined about the tornado, including the locations impacted and movement direction. New information included the eyewitness accounts suggesting that the tornado was moving slowly enough to change direction and move back across its original path.
Although there is high confidence in the location of the Wheeler property in 1855, it remains difficult to determine the start and end point of the tornado considering a lack of reported damage beyond that to a home and barn and a slow southeasterly motion to the storm. Considering that hail was reported at the site of the tornado, in the city of Chicago, and separately in Northfield Township all on the same day (e.g., Chicago Daily Tribune 1855a,c; New York Daily Tribune 1855; New York Herald 1855), it is possible that the storm that produced the tornado in Maine Township was the same storm that produced hail to the east and southeast. Accordingly, connecting a line from the Wheeler property to Chicago bounded by a 1-mi (1.6-km) buffer could suggest an approximate corridor along which a single storm tracked. Based on an assumed storm speed of about 16 km h−1 (10 mi h−1; about the speed that a man can run; New York Herald 1855), multiple sources suggesting that the tornado path covered an arc, or even reversed course, and the limited information stating that the tornado did not extend beyond structures to the northwest and southeast of the Wheeler property, a crude estimated tornado track was constructed and is shown in Fig. 9.
(a) Map of Cook County townships in 1855 with the approximate hail corridor from the storm that spawned the 1855 tornado (green shading) and locations of reported hail (green dots) and (b) map of central and southwest Maine Township in Cook County, Illinois, showing the estimated path of the tornado reconstructed from newspaper accounts. Background image of the Maine Township map is the 1861 map of Cook and DuPage Counties by Flower and Mendel (1861). The highest confidence portions of the tornado track are shown in solid red, with more uncertain portions of the track shown with a dashed red line.
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
Des Plaines in the 1850s
Des Plaines was not incorporated until 1869, but the area of Maine Township that would become Des Plaines was first settled in the 1830s. From the 1830s to the 1850s, Maine Township was very rural in character, with farm homesteads scattered across the landscape. Research indicates that the general area went by multiple names around the time of the tornado, including Des Plaines, Des Plaines River, Aux Plaines, and O’Plaines.
In May 1855, Des Plaines was on the cusp of change. The pivotal event in the area’s development occurred only 7 months earlier when the Illinois and Wisconsin Railroad began service from Chicago on a line that passed through Des Plaines. The railroad brought economic and population growth to the area, and a business and residential district soon developed around the rail depot. Local farmers, like the Wheelers and Pages, benefitted from the railroad’s arrival and the new markets that it opened for their goods. Des Plaines incorporated in 1869, a reflection of the growth that occurred in the decade after the railroad arrived in Maine Township.
By digitizing and georeferencing old maps of the area, the location of the 22 May 1855 tornado can be overlaid upon maps displaying modern-day locations of roads and administrative boundaries. If the tornado occurred today, it would have impacted a populated area near the intersection of Lee Street and Oakton Street in Des Plaines (Fig. 10) and not the city of Chicago (Fig. 11).
The estimated path of the 22 May 1855 tornado shown on a modern-day map of Des Plaines. The highest confidence portions of the tornado track are shown in solid red, with more uncertain portions of the track shown with a dashed red line. Background image is from OpenStreetMap.
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
The best-guess 22 May 1855 tornado location (red triangle) compared to the modern-day city limits of Chicago (gray), 1861 city limits of Chicago (dark gray dashed contour), and Jefferson Township (gray dashed contour).
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
The question remains, When was the first-recorded tornado to impact the modern-day city limits of Chicago? Records at the NWS Chicago Weather Forecast Office indicate that the next candidate tornado occurred on 6 May 1876 and impacted an area near the modern-day “Loop” of Chicago. Twenty years later, in 1896, a tornado on 25 May—part of the May 1896 tornado outbreak sequence that included a significant tornado in Saint Louis, Missouri—cut a path through portions of northern Cook County, including the communities of Edison Park and Norwood Park, which are now within today’s city limits of Chicago. Another candidate tornado occurred in 1781, when a traveler documented significant damage to trees in the Chicago Portage and Mud Lake areas in the modern-day southwestern sections of the city (Chicago Daily Tribune 2006). The 1876 event remains the subject of some discussion, and the 1781 tornado is not currently recognized by National Weather Service records.
A revised account of the 22 May 1855 tornado
In 1855, the Jefferson family owned property on which they operated a mill in Maine Township, northwest of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois. Ransom Lee Wheeler and Sara Maria Page, daughter of Hubert Joseph Page and Samantha Finch Page, lived on a property adjacent to the property owned by the Jefferson family. On 22 May 1855, members of the Page and Wheeler families were on their property as a thunderstorm spawned a tornado to their northwest. The tornado struck their home and barn on their property, killing Samantha Finch Page, two of her young grandchildren, her sister-in-law Harriet (Page) Gillett, and several farm animals. The Wheeler residence was completely destroyed in the tornado, and others who were not killed were seriously injured (see “The Jeffersons and Wheelers” sidebar). This brief tornado occurred within the boundaries of modern-day Des Plaines, Illinois, near the intersection of Oakton Street and Lee Street and not within the modern-day city limits of Chicago, as was previously reported. Because reporters covering the aftermath of the tornado may have used the nearby Illinois and Wisconsin Railroad to reach the area or as a nearby landmark when interviewing survivors, the name “Jefferson” may have been incorrectly assumed to reference the town of Jefferson in Jefferson Township instead of the mill and farm along the Des Plaines River, as the town of Jefferson also was located on the same rail line.
The Jeffersons and Wheelers
The Jeffersons
A prominent local family, the Jeffersons were early settlers who had arrived in Des Plaines by 1840. At the time of the 1855 tornado, brothers Hiram and Luther Jefferson owned property along the Des Plaines River, near Oakton Street. In 1846, Hiram Jefferson inherited their father’s land along the river, south of Oakton Street, and over the course of his life developed the farm into one of the most prosperous in Maine Township. Today, Hiram’s 1850s farmhouse serves as the headquarters of the Des Plaines chapter of the Izaak Walton League, a national conservation organization.
Luther Jefferson’s land also stood along the Des Plaines River near Oakton Street, just north of his brother Hiram’s. Luther built a windmill on his property, which powered a grist and lumber mill. Luther Jefferson’s windmill served as a local landmark and stood near the southeast corner of the modern-day intersection of Oakton Avenue and River Road.
The Wheelers
Though little is known of the Page family following the 1855 tornado, the Wheeler family remained in Des Plaines for many years. In the late 1850s, Ransom and Sarah Wheeler had three more children, one of whom was born in May 1856 and named Lillian after one of their daughters who had died in the tornado the previous year. Unfortunately, Ransom Wheeler died in the early 1860s, just a few years after the tornado.
Mary Isabelle Wheeler, the only child of Ransom and Sarah to survive the tornado, married William Stockwell in 1866. Like the Wheelers, the Stockwells were originally from New York and arrived in Maine Township in the mid-1850s. During their early marriage, the couple made their home in Des Plaines and Mary’s widowed mother and three younger siblings lived with them. By 1880, Mary and William Stockwell moved to Jefferson Township, today Chicago’s Jefferson Park neighborhood, and lived there for many years. After William died in 1909, Mary moved in with her daughter in Wisconsin and remained there until her own death in 1920. Mary Isabelle Stockwell was buried in Town of Maine Cemetery in Park Ridge, Illinois.
The U.S. Signal Service started making official weather maps in January 1871, over 15 years after the storm (NOAA Central Library 2021).
Just a few years later, this railroad became known as the Chicago, St. Paul, and Fond du Lac Railroad, was known as Chicago and North Western Railroad from 1859 to 1995, and is today known as the Metra Union Pacific Northwest Railroad.
Acknowledgments.
This report would not have been possible without the help of genealogical records stored and provided for free by FamilySearch. Also helpful were the digitized maps of the Cook County area stored by the U.S. Library of Congress. The authors thank the newspapers and periodicals staff at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago for their guidance when reviewing old microfilm records. The authors are also appreciative of the contributions made by descendants of Des Plaines pioneer families to the collections of the Des Plaines History Center. The authors thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided numerous helpful comments.
Data availability statement.
Data analyzed in this study were a reanalysis of existing data, which are openly available at locations cited in the reference section.
Appendix: Historic newspaper recreations
Figures A1–A5 present recreations of articles from the Daily Democratic Press (Fig. A1), Chicago Weekly Times (Fig. A2), Chicago Daily Tribune (Figs. A3 and A4), and Kenosha Tribune and Telegraph and Mineral Point Tribune (Fig. A5), which were used to update the story of the 22 May 1855 tornado.
Re-creation of newspaper articles in the Daily Democratic Press, published out of Chicago, covering the tornado of 22 May 1855 and associated weather. Adapted from articles published on 24 May (Daily Democratic Press 1855a), 25 May (Daily Democratic Press 1855b), and 29 May (Daily Democratic Press 1855c).
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
Re-creation of newspaper articles in the Chicago Weekly Times, published out of Chicago, covering the tornado of 22 May 1855 and associated weather. Adapted from articles published on 31 May (Chicago Weekly Times 1855a) and 7 June (Chicago Weekly Times 1855b).
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
Re-creation of a newspaper article in the Chicago Daily Tribune, published out of Chicago, covering the tornado of 22 May 1855 and associated weather. Adapted from article published on 23 May (Chicago Daily Tribune 1855a).
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
Re-creation of newspaper articles in the Chicago Daily Tribune, published out of Chicago, covering the tornado of 22 May 1855 and associated weather. Adapted from articles published on 25 May (Chicago Daily Tribune 1855c) and 26 May (Chicago Daily Tribune 1855d).
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
Re-creation of newspaper articles in the Kenosha Tribune and Telegraph, published out of Kenosha and the Mineral Point Tribune, published out of Mineral Point, Wisconsin, covering the weather of 22 May 1855. Adapted from articles published on 23 May (Mineral Point Tribune 1855), 24 May (Kenosha Tribune and Telegraph 1855a), and 31 May (Kenosha Tribune and Telegraph 1855b,c,d).
Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104, 1; 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0289.1
References
Chicago Daily Tribune, 1855a: A hail storm. Chicago Daily Tribune, 23 May.
Chicago Daily Tribune, 1855b: Terrific tornado. Chicago Daily Tribune, 24 May.
Chicago Daily Tribune, 1855c: The storm of Tuesday. Chicago Daily Tribune, 25 May.
Chicago Daily Tribune, 1855d: Further particulars of the whirlwind of Tuesday. Chicago Daily Tribune, 26 May.
Chicago Daily Tribune, 2006: Chicago area hit by twister in 1781: Earliest tornado on record here. Chicago Daily Tribune, 15 October.
Chicago Weekly Times, 1855a: Awful whirlwind!—Life and property destroyed. Chicago Weekly Times, 31 May.
Chicago Weekly Times, 1855b: Hurricanes in Wisconsin. Chicago Weekly Times, 7 June.
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