Warrenville 2024 Cemetery Walk: August John Surkamer
During our winter closed period we are sharing the stories told during our 2024 Warrenville Cemetery Walk. We hope you enjoy reading about the people who helped shape Warrenville history. At our fifth stop, Cemetery Walk attendees got to learn a little bit about a group of Warrenvillians who used the old Methodist Church after the church was closed, despite some Methodists not being very happy about it.
Good evening—My name is August John Surkamer. I was born March 4, 1894, the oldest child of Herman Peter Surkamer and Theresa Wiesbrock. Some of you probably recognize the Wiesbrock name, spelled the way your one-time alderman spelled it, a little different from the spelling of the road where Wheaton Warrenville South High School is on the site which was once my Uncle Al Wiesbrock’s farm. The Wiesbrock family came this area to farm in 1850 from Germany.
My Dad was known as Pat and we lived in a house a few blocks from here on Fourth Street. Our barn was at the back of the property and it was sold to a newcomer to Warrenville, Mr. Moore, a printer, who ran his business from and lived in what had been our barn. I tell you that because tonight we’re talking about another repurposed Warrenville building, the former Methodist Church.
The 1858 Methodist Church from the west side of the DuPage River, now the Albright Building which is home to the Historical Society
We were Catholic, so I went to German School and Sunday Mass at Ss. Peter and Paul in Naperville. We knew some of the families who had gone to the Warrenville Methodist Church, which closed in 1901 for lack of members and finances. Dad was one of ten fun-loving local men who were a part of the “Live Wire Club.” In November of 1910, after the church building on Second Street had stood empty for nine years, those men bought the building for $500.00 from the Board of Trustees of the Naperville Methodist Church, where some Warrenville folks had become members.
I was 16 by then, so I remember that first New Year’s Eve dance, which was a big success. You will hear from Mr. Triplett how some of those old Warrenville Methodists responded to the sale of the building. Let me only say that the “Live Wire” men were represented in legal proceedings by Frank Herrick, 1899 Wheaton College graduate, whose relative was in the club. You recognize the Herrick name from the road and forest preserve. Dad and the rest of the “live wires” held another dance in mid-January of 1911 with over 200 people in attendance. As you can imagine, regular dance nights continued, as did regular visits from the county sheriff, since things could, well, get out of hand at times. It was said that any farmer going from southwestern DuPage County to Wheaton or Winfield after dark, when dances were being held in Warrenville, avoided the scene by taking a more roundabout route.
A news article disputing the claims of those Methodists who did not want the old church turned into a “place of sin”
The Live Wire Club faded over the years and Glen Mount purchased the building. He used the basement as storage space for his wholesale candy business and left the upstairs auditorium available for rentals. It became the meeting place for the Community Club in the days before we had the Community Building, another repurposed building. Other groups with less community focused purposes, like the Ku Klux Klan also was known to meet there.
In 1917 I married an English woman, Esther Richards, who had immigrated and settled with her sister’s family in Warrenville in 1912. I was in the Navy during World War I—yes, my name is on the rock at the Veterans’ Memorial near your City Hall—and after the war we lived in Aurora and Lombard and I worked for the Public Service Company, which eventually merged with Commonwealth Edison. Interestingly, I dealt with “live wires,” literally, and was awarded this medal, the Britton I. Budd Medal for the Saving of Human Life, named for the company president.
Our family home on Fourth Street became the first convent for the nuns who came to teach at St. Irene’s School, another repurposed building.
I died on December 21, 1957—Warrenville’s doctor Mary Breme told my wife my 63-year-old heart was like that of a 90 year old. I am buried here, one of the very first Catholics buried in this cemetery.