A Wayside Tavern for the weary: Site for Winnetka’s First Church

Gazette Article by Linda Corwin, Gazette Spring 1994

A wayside tavern for the weary pioneers on their long trek from New York to Wisconsin became Winnetka’s first church, Christ Church.  When John and Susannah Garland and their eight children reached the Patterson Tavern in 1847, en route from the East to the wilds of Wisconsin, they stayed overnight for a rest. Awakening to the enchantment of the woods and ravines here, they decided to settle in what is now Winnetka.

Garland purchased the Patterson Tavern and operated it for ten years. It was the tradition in colonial New England that a village’s church be located near a tavern so that churchgoers could repair to the warmth of the public meeting place after services. Initially, Garland closed the tavern to travelers on Sundays, conducting services for his family and friends. Eventually, he built a house for his family just south of the tavern; there he held the very first township meeting for New Trier.

In 1869 he built Garland Church. A marble tablet memorializing his wife, Susannah, and dedicating it to the “Glory of God,” is in the beautiful hilltop church on Sheridan Road that is now Christ Church.

In the liberal tradition of Winnetka’s pioneers, the church was to be a “meeting-house for any and all denominations.” Indeed, Congregationalists and others worshiped there. Seven years later, in 1876, Garland gave the church and the land on which Christ Church now stands, to the Episcopalians in honor of his fourth wife, Juliette. This site, because of its history of early use by settlers, is known as the “Cradle of Winnetka.”

When John and Juliette Garland donated the church to the Episcopalians, they specifically requested that the “property be used as an Episcopal Church and as a final burial lot for the family of John Garland and his descendants forever…at all times free and open to all worshipers alike…”

The burial lot near the church contains the graves of Susannah and John Garland, the original owner of the Patterson Tavern, Erastus Patterson and his daughter Lucia.

In 1903, the original church was given to the first Scandinavian Evangelical Church and was disassembled and moved, board by board, to a West Elm Street lot. It stands as a memorial to Mrs. Emilie Hoyt Fox and her three children, killed in a fire in Chicago in 1903. In 1904, Mr. William M. Hoyt donated funds to build a larger church on the site of Christ Church to memorialize his daughter and her children.

The present church is a reminder of our pioneer history and the ideals upon which the Village was built.

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