Cleaning Company in Glen Ellyn, IL

Glen Ellyn, like the neighboring town to the east, Lombard, had its genesis in an 1833 claim by two brothers from the Finger Lakes region of New York, Morgan and Ralph Babcock. The two claimed property in a large stand of timber near present-day St. Charles Road and the East Branch of the DuPage River. The brothers also arranged for a claim for their New York neighbor Deacon Winslow Churchill, who arrived in 1834 along with some of his adult children and their families. The nascent settlement became known as Babcock’s Grove, and it included property currently part of both Glen Ellyn and Lombard.

Up the trail from the river to the west was a five-cornered intersection. In 1835, Daniel Fish built a cabin there, and other settlers followed. By the 1840s the intersection was called Fish’s Corners and held a general store, blacksmith’s forge, shops selling or repairing wagons and harnesses, and a Baptist church.

Moses Stacy, a soldier in the War of 1812, arrived in 1835 and built a house south of Fish’s Corners. In 1846, Stacy built at the five corners an inn, Stacy’s Tavern, to serve as a halfway stop between Chicago and the Fox River Valley and a probable stop for Galena, Illinois stagecoaches on their way to Rockford, Illinois. Stacy’s Tavern, now a historical monument, stands at what is now the intersection of Geneva Road and Main Street.