Samuel R. Rosenthal was born in Manistique, Michigan. He served as a lieutenant in the army during World War I and later earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 1921. He obtained his law degree from Harvard University in 1924.
In 1926, Rosenthal began work at Chicago’s Sonnenschein law firm. He eventually became a senior partner at the firm, working there for a total of 68 years.
He married Marie-Louise Dreyfus in 1932, with whom he financed a gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago. They had two children, Martin and Louise (Glasser).
Rosenthal was on the Board of Trustees at The Newberry Library, a trustee of the Ravinia Festival Association, Highland Park Public Library and Grinnell College, and a life trustee of the Highland Park Hospital Foundation. He also served as president of the Highland Park Community Chest and Board of Education of Highland Park High School. Rosenthal was a fellow of Brandeis University and the Morgan Library. He was a member of the American Antiquarian Society, the Chicago, American and Illinois bar foundations and Phi Beta Kappa. Harvard Law School named the Samuel R. Rosenthal Professorship of Law in his honor.
***With much of this collection focusing on Riverside Farm, the biographical history thus focuses on the founder of this farm, Francis Arnold Hoffman.
Francis Arnold Hoffman was born in Prussia to Frederick William and Wilhelmina Hoffman. He immigrated to the United States at the age of 18. Soon after arriving in the United States Hoffman took a job as a teacher for a Lutheran congregation in Dunkley’s Grove, Illinois. As the congregation did not have a clergyman at the time, he also conducted services. Enjoying this work, Hoffman became ordained and started work as a pastor.
Hoffman was married in 1844 to Cynthia Gilbert. The couple had several children.
In 1851, due to health issues, Hoffman changed career paths, moving to Chicago to study law and real estate. This eventually led him into banking, the industry in which he worked from 1854-1861.
Hoffman was also active in politics. In 1853 he was elected as a member of city council and in 1860 was elected to the office of Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. Hoffman also wrote and edited a variety of articles for largely German publications throughout his life. He wrote about a multitude of topics, but much of his writing focused on agriculture. His writing was often completed under the pen name, Hans Buschbauer.
In 1875, upon retirement, Hoffman purchased and moved to a farm in Jefferson, Wisconsin, which he named Riverside Farm.
Hoffman was part of a number of organizations throughout his life, including a member of the school board in Dunkley’s Grove, president of the Board of Chicago Underwriters and Deutsches Haus president.
Jane (Hunter) Sloan was born and raised in Sioux City, Iowa. Sloan was a 1910 graduate of Lake Forest College. While at the College, she was active in co-curricular organizations and her senior year was president of Lois Durand residence hall. She married Martin Luther Sloan, Jr. in 1911 and the two moved to Ohio.
Sloan attended graduate school at Western Reserve University, studying verse writing with Ralph Cheney and poetry reading at the Cleveland Playhouse. Sloan's first poetry book, titled "Prairie Vagabond" was published in 1939. She published a second book years later in 1967 titled "Moments Apart." Sloan's poems also appeared in newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, the New York Herald-Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor, as well as several magazines.
During her life, Sloan was a member of the Ohio Poetry Society, the Cleveland College Club, and the local chapter for the National League of American PEN Women.
Sloan continued to write poetry until her death.
Kathy Stevenson began her career as a newspaper columnist for The Beach Reporter in California from 1987-1993. However, in 1993 she moved to Lake Forest, Illinois, after which she became a freelance writer.
Throughout her career Stevenson has published over 350 essays, articles, and short stories in magazines and newspapers, including in The New York Times, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Los Angeles Times.
In addition Stevenson has published two books, titled "Second Thoughts" (1992) and "The Lake Poet" (2001).
Stevenson holds an MFA from Bennington College. She was an English teacher for two years at the Agnes Irwin School in Villanova, Pennsylvania and has also taught writing classes at Ragdale and community centers in the North Shore area.
Francis Weeks was a longtime Highland Park, Illinois resident. He and his wife traveled extensively in the 1960s-1980s, including throughout Western Europe, Asia, parts of Africa and Peru.
Elliott Donnelley was a third generation Chicago printer (R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company) who lived in Lake Forest from his boyhood until his death in 1975. He had a life-long enthusiasm for trains, and after studying at Dartmouth College he went into the railroad modeling business, for amateur model makers in the early 1930s. Donnelley in 1933 took over American Model Engineers, Inc. Under the corporate identity of Scale-Models, Inc. the firm created “Scale-Craft working models,” according to an ca. 1938 brochure, and his renamed Scale-Craft brand operated in Chicago, Libertyville and Round Lake until the 1950s, when the firm was sold and moved to Michigan. The model kits came with large-scaled plans with instructions for assembly and placing custom signage.
Elliott’s parents were Laura and Thomas Elliott (T.E.) Donnelley, who built their Clinola estate and country home on Green Bay Road in 1911. Second-generation, Yale-educated T.E. Donnelley grew the family business substantially from the 1890s well into the twentieth century. He also launched in 1903 the annual holiday-time gift books, the Lakeside Classics, for clients, employees and friends. In his early adult and married years Elliott Donnelley and his spouse, Ann Steinwedell Donnelley (Hardy), lived in various small houses in Lake Forest on Wildwood and Atteridge Roads. In 1934 The Donnelleys built a home, designed by architects Frazier & Raftery, on Ridge Lane in Lake Forest, originally with a train room in the basement. Donnelley’s model train set-up later moved to the nearby basement of Lake Forest’s City Hall.
Donnelley was a trustee of Lake Forest College beginning in 1942, leading to a new commitment to the College among local estate families over the next three decades. (See “Back on Track with Elliott Donnelley” in 30 Miles North…, the College’s history, 2000, p. [145]; see also the photo on p. 135.) He served as chairman of the College’s Board of Trustees from 1967 to 1971, and played key roles in the building of two major structures on campus, the Donnelley Library (1964-65, since 2004 the expanded and renovated Donnelley and Lee Library) and the Sports Center (1968). Donnelley also donated landmark rare books to the library and also funds for such purchases on an annual basis in t he 1970s. He played a crucial role in the difficult late 1960s period in student participation on campus, and personally led face-to-face, all-hours negotiations with students to resolve issues in that dynamic environment. During the interim between College presidents in 1969-70 Donnelley was active in working with troubled students, “sentenced” to Saturday mornings working with the chairman on the trains on his estate. At the end of such work sessions where nothing was said about the occasion of the visit, Donnelley is reported to have said in his characteristic stutter, “Now, you-r-‘re g-go-ing to try harder t-to g-get along t-this w-week, aren’t y-you?” His recidivism rate was remarkably low. In the 1970s he was awarded a special honorary degree by the College, and in the last Commencement Week before his death he and Mrs. Donnelley hosted all of the graduating seniors at his home for a barbecue supper and a chance to ride the trains with himself at the engine controls.
Chicago native Elizabeth T. Lunn was born Elizabeth Teter. She was a professor of Biology at Lake Forest College beginning as a graduate assistant there in 1929. She worked her way up to Department Head from 1954-1964. Lunn retired in 1970.
Lunn received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College in 1925 and her M.A. (1932) and Ph.D. (1939) from Northwestern University. She also studied for two years at the University of Chicago. Lunn married Richard S. Lunn in 1937 in Massachusetts.
During a decade (1935-1946) away from teaching at Lake Forest College, Lunn worked as a chemist in a testing laboratory for an oil company from 1942-1944 and a clerk for the United States Army Corps of Engineers from 1944-1945.
Lunn gave many talks and lectures, as well as conducting workshops throughout her career. Lunn co-authored "A Laboratory Manual for General Biology" and wrote a book titled "Plants of Illinois Dunesland" in 1982.
Lunn was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Environmental Control Commission and Sigma Xi. She also served as secretary/treasurer and later president of the American Association of University Professors, national and regional director of Beta, Beta, Beta, president of the Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society and on the Board of Directors of the Lake County Tuberculosis Association.