Women of Wheaton History Ride 2023

If you were unable to join us on the History Ride, you can tour Wheaton on your own to the below addresses of these famous Wheaton Women.

Orinda Gary Wheaton

(1813-1882) (310 W Evergreen) She was in the room in 1840 when town pioneers, Jesse (Orinda’s husband) and Warren Wheaton met with Orinda’s brother, Erastus Gary, to persuade representatives of the Galena and Union Railroad to route tracks southward through the Wheaton/Gary farms. This resulted in Wheaton being developed around the railroad route.

Elsie Storrs Dow

(1859-1944) (527 Kenilworth-Anderson Commons) She attended Wheaton College from 1877 to 1881, taking the Classical Program normally only taken by men. She went on to receive a Master’s Degree, then taught in New Hampshire and Minnesota before returning to Wheaton College in 1889 where she was chairperson of the English Department for 46 years. She also taught history, classics and math. She retired in 1942.

Katharine Adams Wells

(1860-1942) (102 E. Wesley St-Adams Park) She was Wheaton’s first librarian. She’s also the daughter of Chicago Board of Trade co-founder, John Quincy Adams (1824-1899), a distant relative (fourth cousin, twice removed) of the sixth President of the United States. In 1891 Wheaton’s first library was built on land contributed by Katharine’s father, now the Wheaton Historical Society building. Katherine helped oversee assembly of the books and became the librarian. When she died, she prescribed that the family home be demolished for the site of Adams Park, and she donated $50,000 for the building of the current library, built in 1964.

Margaret Adams Dunton

(1897-1990) (610 N Scott) - President of the DuPage Historical Society from 1962-1969, she motivated the community to turn Wheaton’s vacated library into a historical museum. She served as the museum’s curator from 1967-1979. When the County Historical Museum opened in 1979, she was 82 years old. She had served as a teacher for many of her early years in Cloverdale, Bartlett, Elmhurst and Villa Park.

Marget "Margy" Hamilton

(1915-2019) (City Hall) - Wheaton’s first female Mayor in 1969, Hamilton won in a special election when the current mayor had to move out of town. She first became involved in politics during World War II when she objected to a decision by Barrington officials to bar Japanese-Americans from the public swimming pool because their parents’ property had been confiscated. Recognizing the “darling” children banned were the same age as her own, she protested and won. “That is the incident that started my interest in politics,” she said. She moved to Wheaton in 1950 and started the Wheaton chapter of the League of Women Voters in 1955. She became the first female city Commissioner for Wheaton in 1959. While on the council, she pushed for a council-manager form of government, with a professional city manager - the structure that is used today. She worked to preserve the right-of-way of the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin (CA&E) railroad that became the Illinois Prairie Path. She presided over the redevelopment of the CA&E rail yards into the Wheaton Center. She pushed for a new Wheaton Public Library and for the acquisition of the building that is now City Hall. She is best known for pushing a fair housing ordinance that barred discrimination in housing purchases. It passed 4-1 by the council in 1967, making Wheaton the first Illinois community to pass such a law. She told Mr. Goldsborough in an interview that she vowed if she was ever in a position to change the housing regulations, creating a fair housing law would be the first thing she would do. After choosing not to run for mayor in 1971, she founded the county’s first chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and she led the Older Adult Institute at College of DuPage until 2008, when she was 93 years old.

Margaret Abbott

(1878-1955) (Wheaton North HS) She was the first American woman ever to win an Olympic event, at the 1900 Paris Olympiad. Born in Calcutta, India, she moved with her widowed mother to Chicago in 1884. Her mother, Mary P. Abbott, was a writer and golfer, and made society connections that led to her membership in 1887, along with five other women, at the Chicago Golf Club. In the late 1890s, Mary and Margaret became friends with Chicago Golf Club co-founder, Charles Blair MacDonald, who played mixed-doubles golf games with them and championed their efforts. In 1899 Margaret and her mother traveled to Paris for an extended period of time. While there both competed in the Paris Summer Olympics of 1900, which were the first games to include women! Interestingly, this Olympics included numerous events that were considered demonstration sports, so many competitors didn’t realize they were competing in the Olympics. Margaret won the nine-hole tournament with a score of 47, while her mother tied for seventh place with a score of 65. But at the time of her death in 1955, Margaret never knew that she had competed in the Olympics and was the first woman to win an Olympic event, as the event wasn’t certified until after her death. Ms. Abbott was also a writer and inventor of children’s games.

Gail O'Grady

(b. 1963) (Wheaton North HS) The most famous female actor to come from Wheaton, O’Grady moved to Hollywood in 1986 and had a recurring role in the TV series, “NYPD Blue” as the “gum-cracking, big-haired squad secretary, Donna Abandando.” She also was a series regular in the TV drama, “American Dreams” (2002-2005); and she has appeared in many made for TV films and TV series, including “Criminal Minds.” In 1987 she made a very funny Diet Pepsi commercial with Michael J. Fox where she comes to Fox’s door asking for a Diet Pepsi - worth a watch on YouTube. Ironically, while a student at Wheaton North HS, she never won a spot in the school play!

Glennette Tilley Turner

(b. 1933) (Wheaton College Blanchard Hall) She is a Black educator, historian, author and writer of Wheaton. She taught second grade in Wheaton Public Schools for 20 years, from 1968-1988. She’s an expert in Black History and the Underground Railroad in Wheaton, DuPage County, and Illinois. In 1999 she notably wrote the 200-page “The Underground Railroad in Illinois.” She also wrote, “Following in Their Footsteps: Biographies of Ten Outstanding African Americans” and “Take a Walk in Their Shoes: Biographies of 14 Outstanding African Americans.” Her research identified Wheaton College as a stop on the Underground Railroad. In 2009 a scholar uncovered a 1889 history of a regiment of the Wheaton Volunteer Infantry in which a Black soldier had written that Wheaton College hid runaway slaves in Blanchard Hall. Ms. Turner was appointed an advisor to the National Park Service to help educate staff on the historical preservation of Underground Railroad sites and was awarded the Park Service “Underground Railroad Network to Freedom” award. She wrote the Wheaton chapter of the book, “Illinois Roots,” published in 1985 and revised and republished in a new edition this year. In April, 2023, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Illinois Historical Society.

Larycia Hawkins

(b. 1972) (Wheaton College) - She started her career at Wheaton College in 2007 & became the first tenured Black female Professor at Wheaton College in 2013. In 2015 a social media posting of herself in a hijab, to show Christian solidarity for Muslims, sparked a major controversy. Although Christians are often portrayed wearing headscarves in the Bible, and other Wheaton faculty had worn headscarves previously, college administrators placed her on administrative leave, sparking divisions in the Wheaton College community. Hawkins stated, “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book…And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.” But some evangelical Christians read her statement as a conflation of Christian and Muslim theology. Wheaton College responded, “While Islam and Christianity are both monotheistic, we believe there are fundamental differences between the two faiths, including what they teach about God's revelation to humanity, the nature of God, the path to salvation and the life of prayer.” Despite much support among members of the college, administrators created a process to remove her. After a year of legal upset, Hawkins agreed to leave the faculty and now teaches at the University of Virginia. The college agreed to create an endowed scholarship in her name and the president of the college made a statement that the college hoped to become a “better, stronger community with a shared understanding of academic freedom in the context of Christian convictions.”

Margaret Landon

(1903-1993) (Wheaton College, Class of 1925) She wrote “Anna and the King of Siam '' during the period 1937-1939 when she and her husband lived in Wheaton. The book was adapted into the movie, “Anna and the King of Siam '' in 1946, starring Irene Dune and Rex Harrison. Later, it was adapted for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Tony Award winning, Broadway musical, “The King and I,” starring Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner. In 1956 Brynner made a popular film version of the musical, also starring Deborah Kerr and Rita Moreno. Landon and her husband were missionaries in Thailand in the 1920’s and 1930’s. It was there that she learned about an Indian-born, widowed Englishwoman who had been the governess to the family of the king of Thailand. “Anna and the King of Siam '' is a semi-biographical story, based on the governess. Margaret Landon is buried in Wheaton Cemetery.

Kate Pierson

(b. 1948) (Wheaton College). She is a member of the band, The B52’s, a New-Wave party band, known for the 1989 album, “Cosmic Thing” that included the popular song, “Love Shack.” Born in Rutherford, NJ Pierson attended Wheaton College during the period 1966-1968, living in McManis-Evans Hall, room 316, but she received her Journalism degree from Boston University in 1968. After spending time in Europe and Boston, she moved with a friend to Athens, GA, where she met an artsy group of people. In 1976 she began to play guitar in a band with three locals and another musician from New Jersey, playing around Athens, then in New York City, where they raised a following with hits, “Rock Lobster” and “Private Idaho” and a session on Saturday Night Live. Pierson and her wife Monica Coleman, whom she married in 2015, live in Woodstock, New York, and they run several lodging sites.

Nancy Swider-Petlz

(b.1956) (Wheaton College) She competed in speed skating in four Olympics: 1976, 1980, 1984 and 1988. She started speed skating when she was 13 years old and competed in her first Olympics at age 19. She was the first American woman to compete in four Olympics and has been inducted into the U.S. Speed Skating Hall of Fame. Swider-Peltz finished seventh in the 3,000-meter race at the 1976 Olympic games in Innsbruck, and shortly after the Olympics, she set her first world record - in the 3,000-meter race - by four seconds. She was an alternate at the 1980 Olympics, and that year she set her second world record in the 10,000-meter race. She retired after the 1980 Olympics to finish her education but then returned in 1984 in Sarajevo, where she finished 10th in the 3,000-meter race. Again, she retired, and then gave birth to a daughter, Nancy, in 1987. Soon, the new mom decided to train again for the 1988 Olympics and she qualified yet again! Swider-Peltz participated in four more Olympic trials - in 1992, 1994, 1998 and 2002: eight Olympic trials in four decades! In 1992, at age 34, she missed the team by just one spot! Mother and daughter, ages 45 and 14, competed against one another in the first race of the 2002 Olympic trials, and the daughter won. She has coached speed skating for over 30 years. She grew up in Park Ridge and graduated from Wheaton College in 1981, where she was a five-time All-American swimmer her senior year, setting college records in the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke. An amazing athlete, as are her daughter and son, and her husband Jeff is a longtime assistant football coach at Wheaton College.