The Crete Area Historical Society recently purchased the 1853 Congregational Church, which had been for decades an antiques store. The group plans to turn the building into a history museum. (Paul Eisenberg / Daily Southtown)

As residents of Crete prepared to celebrate their town’s 150th year in 1986, they began a concerted fundraising effort for a museum to house a century and a half’s worth of local history.

“They sold everything,” said Ryan Martin, president of the Crete Area Historical Society. “They made blankets, ashtrays, calendars and mugs for the sesquicentennial. I was amazed at how much they raised.”

Civic pride was peaking. One of the floats in the Crete Sesquicentennial Parade even showcased the altar from the old Crete Congregational Church, a building nearly as old as the village itself.

As the celebration faded and life in Crete returned to normal, plans for the museum were put on hold, and eventually shelved. And gradually, the crafters, makers and donors who had raised money for the effort died.

The Historical Society’s organized activities “fell by the wayside” in the 1990s and early 2000s Martin said, but an undercurrent of interest remained among those with deep roots in the community. In more recent years, those people revived the Society, as well as one of its 1980s aims, with the help of the funds their predecessors had raised at the sesquicentennial.

“The Historical Society didn’t squander it (the money),” Martin said. “They’ve had it ever since. We had to do those original donors proud. The best thing to do with that money was to use it for what it was earmarked for.”

After about five years of searching for the perfect spot, they finally spent those funds two weeks ago when they closed a deal for a former antiques store on Exchange Avenue.

“It was too good to be true,” Martin said, because their new museum will be housed in buildings that played a key role in many of the stories they’d be telling there.

An undated photo provided by the Crete Area Historical Society shows the Crete Congregational Church, built in 1853, before being converted into an antiques store in the 1950s. (Crete Area Historical Society)

Built in 1853 by some of the area’s earliest settlers, the Crete Congregational Church was home to ardent abolitionists who’d assisted Freedom Seekers fleeing slavery along a spur of the Sauk Trail, Martin said. Among them were Caroline Quarlls, whose harrowing escape included an encounter with church members in Beebe’s Grove, an area east of Crete along Richton Road, according to an account from the 1880s.

Martin said they’d taken an oath in 1841 declaring slavery to be “oppressive and sinful” and vowing to “do all they can to bring about its speedy and peaceful overthrow.”

“They were one of the first churches in Illinois to put that into writing,” he said. “They were advising their congregation to break the law, basically.”

That link was one of the reasons the church building was already on the Historical Society’s radar. Past president Phyllis Monks was one of several from the group who researched the history of the church and its early members, which resulted in the National Park Service designating the Crete Congregational Church as a historic site on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Trail in 2018, according to the Society.

More than a decade after taking that oath, church members who had been meeting in a schoolhouse at Beebe’s Grove decided to build a church in Crete, which had recently been platted. Some of those founders rode to Michigan in the dead of winter so they could cut timber and bring it back via sleigh. About 50 years after that, church members collected enough money to install 10 new stained glass windows, each bearing the name of one of the church’s founding families.

A stained glass window installed in the 1890s at the old Crete Congregational Church faces inward and says "Adams," in honor of one of the church's founding families. It's one of 10 windows with names that were installed about 50 years after the church was built. (Paul Eisenberg / Daily Southtown)

Among those names enshrined in those 1894 windows is Adams, for Henry and Catherine Adams, who happen to be Martin’s ancestors — “my 5th great grandparents,” he said. To his knowledge, none of the other names in the windows link to direct descendants who still live in the Crete area.

“There’s not a lot of the old English-American families left,” he said. “They moved west, but we stuck around Crete forever.”

The building is adjacent to Crete Cemetery, the final resting spot of many of the abolitionists associated with the Congregational Church, as well as Willard Wood, who is said to be Crete’s founder.

It also holds the remains of William Hewes, one of four Revolutionary War veterans buried in Will County. It wasn’t Hewes’ first resting spot, though. He was originally buried in his family plot, but his remains were relocated when the old family property was redeveloped in the 1920s into Lincoln Fields Racetrack, which later became Balmoral Park. Some of Hewes’ family members still are buried in the track’s infield, Martin said.

“The little family cemetery is there still,” he said, “but it’s unmarked. They took out the fence years ago and laid the headstones flat. Sallie Hewes Cole is still out there, and probably a few others.”

The Congregational congregation next door to the municipal cemetery lasted another half century before disbanding and selling their church building in 1957. By 1963, it was in its first incarnation as an antiques shop, evolving into a sort of mini-mall by the 1970s, where people could buy trinkets from the past, books, and for a short time, even ice cream.

The entrance to the old Crete Congregational Church building in Crete still shows a sign for The Marketplace antiques store. The 1853 building was recently acquired by the Crete Area Historical Society, which plans to turn it into a museum. (Paul Eisenberg / Daily Southtown)

That variety was made possible by the acquisition of another building, which was connected to the old church by a wood frame addition. Besides extra space, the new building was already familiar to people in Crete, as it had been the village’s train depot and located in Crete Park until the Chicago and Eastern Illinois railroad stopped offering passenger service in the late 1960s. The owners of what was by then known as The Marketplace purchased the old depot and similar to William Hewes, it was moved across Exchange Street next to the old church.

It was the second time the depot had changed address. Originally built to serve the town of Goodenow a bit south down the rail line, it was no longer needed after the bulk of Goodenow was wiped out by a massive tornado outbreak in 1917. The depot in Crete had recently burned, so the Goodenow depot was sent north to replace it.

Martin said the Historical Society would like that section of the museum to focus on the area’s rich railroad heritage. Besides the busy adjacent rail line, Crete was once home to the Faithorn Rail Yard, of which little remains.

The middle section is preliminarily planned for a research area, where such materials as old plat maps and other historical resources will be available.

And Martin hopes the old church portion will someday look a bit more like its original incarnation.

A photo from the 1980s provided by the Crete Area Historical Society shows The Marketplace antiques store, which occupied the former Crete Congregational Church on Exchange Street in Crete. The Historical Society recently acquired the 1853 building and plans to turn it into a museum. (Crete Area Historical Society)

But the old pews and other religious accouterments are long gone, and the old alter hasn’t been seen since it appeared in Crete’s 1986 sesquicentennial parade.

“If we could find that original pulpit that was used on the float, we could return it to its rightful place,” Martin said.

They don’t have the original church bell, either, but at least they know where it is. When the antique store owners put a new roof on the building in the 1980s, they took down the bell tower, Martin said, and donated it to Crete Township, and it remains on display outside of the Township Hall on Wood Street.

But the Crete Area Historical Society has more immediate concerns now that it has acquired the historic structure of its dreams. The floor in the church portion of the building will need an overhaul, among other work before they can open up the whole place to the public. Martin estimated it would be two years before that could happen.

The bones of the place are in good shape, said Martin, who works in construction. He said he crawled through a hatch to the area underneath what was once the bell tower, finding old staircases that date back to the building’s origins and beams made from that virgin timber cut in Michigan in 1853.

“I was looking at beams up there, and they’re so dense you don’t even see any pores,” he said. “If you went to drive a nail in it, you’d probably bend the nail.”

Luckily, the group is comprised of lots of handy people, Martin said.

“Every Saturday for the foreseeable future our members will be there fixing the place up, doing what we can,” he said. They’ll also be fundraising and applying for grants to help pay for repairs and upgrades.

But the time and effort will all be worthwhile as they work toward a home for the stories of Caroline Quarlls, William Hewes, the Faithorn Rail Yard and even the mysteriously missing parade pulpit.

“I’ve always thought Crete deserves a museum,” Martin said. “We’re so darn old. We have so many stories to tell, so many artifacts to display.

“I’m just glad we finally got one.”

Landmarks is a weekly column by Paul Eisenberg exploring the people, places and things that have left an indelible mark on the Southland. He can be reached at peisenberg@tribpub.com.