OPACC_2015_15

History
The Village of Orland Park held its first Board of Trustees meeting in 1892, but its history reaches further back in time. Names filter out of the past
like yellowed notes tucked into the pages of an old book – names like Henry Taylor, Ichabod and William Myrick, Jacob and Bernard Hostert, Thomas
Cooper and John Humphrey.
Henry Taylor arrived in 1834 and
became the area’s first settler. Ichabod
and William Myrick settled on 139th
Street, west of Wolf Road, in 1844 and
became Orland Township’s first officials.
In the 1850s, Jacob and Bernard Hostert
built log cabins for their families. Both
structures survived the years and were
reconstructed near the Humphrey
Woods in the 1980s by the Orland
Historical Society. The Aileen S. Andrew
Foundation, established by the owners of
the Andrew Corporation in memory of its
founding family, was a key contributor to
preserving this historical part of Orland
Park’s past.
When the railroad came to the
settlement in 1879, the new “Sedgewick
Station” forever changed the character
of the community. The agrarian hamlet
swiftly grew into a thriving commercial
and shipping center serving surrounding
farms. The name of the village’s first train
station, “Sedgewick,” is remembered
today with the village’s Lake Sedgewick in Centennial Park.
John Humphrey’s parents brought him to the area as a
child in 1846. Later, a young Humphrey joined the thousands
of hopefuls who sought riches in California’s Gold Rush. In 1861
he returned disappointed but no less enthusiastic. Following
the Civil War, he went to college in Michigan and then studied
law with a firm in Chicago. He was elected to the Illinois State
House of Representatives in 1870 and was subsequently reelected
a number of times. He became the state senator
for the area in the mid-1800s and served in the Illinois State
Senate until 1911. Humphrey is credited with having the Village
of Orland Park incorporated as a municipality in 1892 and
served as the village’s first mayor until his death in 1914.
Humphrey’s Orland Park home, constructed in 1881, is
a museum that was bequeathed to the Orland Historical
Humphrey House
Stellwagon Farm
History
OLD ORLAND INSURANCE AGENCY, INC.
14306 Union Avenue | Orland Park, IL 60462
p. 708.349.2000 | f. 708.349.6072 | www.oldorland.com
14 • The Orland Park Area Chamber of Commerce • orlandparkchamber.org