How is it that an administrative error could bring joy to thousands of suburban residents, year after year, for over a century? The one-word answer is daisies. What about daisies? Who celebrates them? Where and why? Daisies are part of the very soul of Clarendon Hills, the compact village of nearly 9,000 residents and one of the towns along the Q.
The story begins with Henry Middaugh, a native of upstate New York, who arrived in Chicago in 1854 at the age of twenty-one. During the next fifteen years, Middaugh amassed a small fortune in the lumber and furniture business. In 1869, Middaugh joined four other investors in a real estate development venture along the newly opened (five years earlier) CB&Q railway line west of Hinsdale. One of the other investors suggested the name Clarendon Hills, in honor of a similarly named Boston suburb.
For his part of the venture, Middaugh acquired 270 acres north of the CB&Q train tracks, with the expectation of creating a residential suburb. The five investors filed a 40-acre plat on November 4, 1873, for their Clarendon Hills suburb, straddling the CB&Q tracks. Middaugh planted eleven miles of American white ash and elm trees along the gently curving but still vacant streets. Unfortunately, the economic downturn of 1873 and other adversities frustrated the development plans of Middaugh and the other investors and the little community got off to a slow start.
Middaugh created a farm on his unsold acreage, raising several hundred horses, Berkshire pigs, sheep, and thoroughbred Jersey cattle. In 1889, he commissioned the construction of an elegant, twenty-room, 8,800 square foot mansion, that took four years to complete. In order that his prized livestock might thrive, Middaugh annually reseeded the property with the best available grass seed, imported from Ireland.
One year, about 1890, the property was reseeded as was the custom, but with the coming of spring, it was evident to all that a mistake had been made – the meadowlands sloping down toward the railroad were ablaze with – daisies! The wrong seed had been shipped and sown. The high-quality daisy seeds were hardy enough that the flowers annually reseeded themselves, giving the community the unique identity that is still celebrated today.
Middaugh sold his mansion in 1913 to a buyer who subsequently resold it to the Catholic Church, who used it first as an infirmary for nuns, then later as a convent. In 2002, the mansion, in deteriorated condition and functionally obsolete for contemporary purposes, was demolished and replaced with a more modern building.
The legacy of the daisies however, lives on. The village of Clarendon Hills continues to celebrate the colorful seeding mistake in civic celebrations such as the annual Daisy Days and Daisy Dash 5K race.
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