Barrington Home Inspector
Lawson Home Inspection & Radon Testing has been serving Barrington, Illinois buyers, sellers, real estate agents, and attorneys for more than twenty-five years. Robin Lawson is a Illinois licensed property inspector and a Illinois licensed radon testing professional.
Barrington has a motto - great place to live, work and play. Interesting history of BarringtonBy treaty dated September 26, 1833 ending the Black Hawk War, the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes ceded to the United States all lands from the west shore of Lake Michigan west to area that the Winnebago tribe ceded in 1832, north to the area that the Menominees had previously ceded to the United States, and south to the area previously ceded by an 1829 treaty at Prairie du Chien, a total of approximately 5,000,000 acres. This treaty extinguished all title to the area east of the Mississippi River by the Sacs, Fox, Winnebago, Chippewa, Ottawa and Pottawatomi tribes. Between 1833 and 1835, the U.S. Government paid approximately $100,000 in annuities and grants to the Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Chippewa tribes, presumably as payment for the land.
Following this treaty, pioneers traveling from Troy, New York via Fort Dearborn (newly renamed the city of Chicago) settled in what would later become Cuba Township in Lake County. The first white pioneers known to have settled in Barrington township were Jesse F. Miller of Steuben County, New York and Williarn Van Orsdal, who arrived in 1834, before the three year period which had been given the Native Americans to vacate the region, and before local land surveys. Other settlers, primarily from Vermont, upper New York State and Berkshire County, Massachusetts, settled in what is now Cook County.
The combined settlement of these pioneers, located at the intersection of Illinois Route 68 and Sutton Road, was originally called Miller Grove due to the number of families with that surname but later renamed Barrington Center because it "centered" both ways from the present Sutton Road and from Algonquin and Higgins roads. Although residents and historians agree that the name Barrington was taken from Great Barrington in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and that many settlers immigrated to the area from Berkshire County, there is currently no evidence that settlers immigrated from Great Barrington itself.
Much of the history of Barrington since its settlement parallels the development of railroad lines from Chicago's growing port facilities. In 1854, William Butler Ogden gained control of the Chicago, St. Paul & Fond du Lac Railroad and extended the line to the northwest corner of Cook County, where a station named Deer Grove was built. Fearing that the railroad would bring too many saloons and Irish Catholics to the area, Robert Campbell, a civil engineer working for the railroad, purchased a farm 2 miles (3.2 km) northwest of the Deer Grove station and platted a community there. At Campbell's request, the railroad moved the station to the new location, which he named Barrington after Barrington Center.
By 1863, the prosperity of the Civil War era increased Barrington's population to 300. In order to provide a tax mechanism to finance improvements, Barrington incorporated on February 16, 1865; Homer Willmarth became the first village president. The village prospered as many Chicago grain merchants whose homes were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 constructed opulent Queen Anne-style residences along Barrington's tree-shaded streets. In 1889, the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway (the "EJ&E") was built through Barrington, crossing the Chicago & North Western Railway northwest of town.
The village continued to serve agriculturally-based trading interests into the twentieth century, including dairy farming on the meadows and woodlots surrounding the community.[25] Fueled by post–World War I prosperity, however, a number of Chicago business leaders built their residences on large woodland tracts around the village, bringing an end to dairying. Barrington served as headquarters for local businesses, including the Jewel Tea Company.
The large estate acreage that tended to remain in family hands decade after decade protected Barrington from the densely packed residential developments that came to neighboring communities in the 1950s and 1960s. As a result, Barrington's population grew very little-- from 3,213 in 1930 to only 5,435 in 1960.
On November 27, 1934, a running gun battle between FBI agents and Baby Face Nelson took place in Barrington resulting in the deaths of Agent Herman Hollis and Inspector Samuel P. Cowley.Nelson, though shot 17 times, was still able to steal Hollis's car and race away with his wife, Helen Gillis. Nelson succumbed from his wounds at approximately 8pm that evening and was unceremoniously dumped near a Niles, Illinois cemetery. Infamous for allegedly killing more federal agents than any other individual, Nelson was later buried at Saint Joseph Cemetery in River Grove, Illinois. A plaque near the entrance to Langendorf Park, part of the Barrington Park District, commemorates the agents killed in the gunfight.
