What follows in the cramped handwriting of Clerk Charles Duncker is a compressed portrait of municipal birth—ordinances drafted, officers sworn, licenses issued, troublemakers blacklisted—all within the span of a summer.
The Room Where It Started
The first recorded meeting of the Corporation of East Dundee was held June 13, 1887. Fred Buchert presided as President. Charles Duncker kept the minutes. The board included six trustees, and among them was an attorney named John H. Funke—the man who would essentially author the legal architecture of the new village before quietly disappearing from the records before the first annual election.
The village called itself "the Corporation of East Dundee" in every document from day one. Not a township. Not a precinct. A corporation—the municipal form under Illinois law that gave it the power to tax, license, police, and punish.
There was no founding speech preserved in the record book. No ribbon cutting. The minutes simply begin.
Forty-Eight Days to Build a Government
Between June 13 and the end of July 1887, Funke and the board drafted and passed the founding ordinance package:
- An ordinance on corporate powers and duties
- An ordinance on streets and public ways
- An ordinance establishing police powers
- And the one that would define East Dundee's character for the next decade: the Liquor License Ordinance, passed July 5, 1887
The signature mechanism was the Blacklist: any family member could file a sworn affidavit with the Village Clerk, and that person's name would be entered into a formal list circulated to every licensed establishment in East Dundee. Selling or giving alcohol to a blacklisted person carried a fine of $10 to $50. The licensee also carried dual bonds—$500 to the village for the license itself, and $3,000 to the State of Illinois under the Dram Shop Act as indemnity against damages caused by their customers' intoxication.
Fifty-Seven Days: Five Saloons
At a special meeting on August 31, 1887—57 days after the village incorporated—five men each paid $150 and received the first liquor licenses issued by the Corporation of East Dundee:
1. Joachim Lorentz 2. Ernest Herrman 3. Charles Koch 4. Henry Plinke 5. A fifth licensee (name partially illegible in the record)
All five paid the same night. Whether these were newly opened establishments or existing businesses coming into compliance with the new ordinance, the record does not say.
Six days later—on September 6, 1887—a woman named Mrs. C. Kelly appeared before the board to petition the removal of F.B. Kelly from the Blacklist. The board granted it. The liquor ordinance had been in effect for two months, and the Blacklist was already in use.
Two weeks after that, Mrs. H. Ruth petitioned to have her son William Ruth removed. Granted as well.
The mechanics of social control the board had written into law in July were working—or at least operating—by September.
The Engine House and the First Year
The village's early civic life was centered on the Engine House—the firehouse, purchased from Henry Edwards in October 1887 for $150. It was where meetings were held, where elections were conducted, where the village's daily business took shape.
Henry Guldan was hired in the first weeks as the village's police officer—the only one. His salary settled at approximately $57–$58 per month, making him one of the highest-compensated figures on the village payroll. He was paid in near-monthly entries that appear across every financial record from the period. The board also voted $10 to buy him an "ivory blue Police suit." He would serve continuously for at least seven years.
The first year also brought:
- An order to print quarantine cards for Scarlet Fever, Small Pox, and Diphtheria (September 1887)
- Formal complaints to the Chicago Railroad demanding a flagman at the Main Street crossing
- The beginning of Oatman Brothers|complaints about the Oatman Brothers dairy operation, whose buttermilk and cheese waste was draining into the Fox River and millrace
- The first sidewalk petitions
The first formal annual election under the village's new structure was held April 17, 1888, at the Engine House. Polls opened at 8 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m. 114 votes were cast.
Charles J. Bethke won the presidency with 108 of 114 votes—a near-unanimous endorsement. The Trustee races were more contested. Five seats were decided cleanly. The sixth ended in a tie.
Fred Roehl and John Bruhn each received exactly 56 votes.
Illinois law and Robert's Rules offered various remedies for tied elections—runoffs, coin flips, drawing lots. The men in the Engine House that night chose matches. Each candidate drew a match from a bundle. The one who drew the last match was declared the loser.
Fred Roehl drew last. John Bruhn was declared the duly elected Trustee of the Corporation of East Dundee.
No recount. No appeal. No runoff. The decision stood.
What the Record Book Tells Us About the Incorporation Date
East Dundee's founding has been the subject of some local confusion. Different eras produced different dates on signage and promotional materials. The primary record settles the question about as clearly as a handwritten ledger can:
The Corporation of East Dundee was operating under that name, with officers, ordinances, and legal authority, on June 13, 1887. That is the first date in the first record book, and it is the date from which all subsequent records flow.
Whether a prior legal act—a county filing, a state charter, a plat recording—preceded that first meeting is a question the record book cannot answer, because it begins with the meeting rather than with whatever authorized it. But by June 1887, the corporation existed, it had a president and a clerk and a board of trustees, and it was making decisions with the force of municipal law.
The first annual election in April 1888 was not a founding—it was the first regularized transfer of power within an already-functioning government.
Priorities in the First Summer
The ordinance record from 1887 shows a clear sequence: the board drafted a comprehensive liquor ordinance before purchasing a fire truck, and established a police force before paving a street. The mechanisms of social regulation—the license, the bond, the blacklist—were in place by July and in use by September.
East Dundee, Illinois was a wet village in a dry county, a German immigrant community on the Fox River, a village that licensed five saloons within 57 days of its founding and then spent the next decade keeping careful records of who got blacklisted and who got their license renewed.
The record book does not explain why they incorporated when they did. What it preserves is the legal and administrative structure they built in the months that followed.
Have a story, photo, or document related to East Dundee's founding era? Share it with us.