Col. William Augustus Ray organized the 40th Wisconsin Regiment at Camp Randall, Madison and left for Memphis on June 14, 1864, where they reinforced the Union Army following the Second Battle of Memphis. Col. Ray became President of the Calumet State Bank, the first founded in Blue Island. When the Colonel died in 1895 his widow sold the home to …

This house was built by one of Blue Island’s early farming families and was later occupied by Norman Rexford, who retired to farm here after selling the Blue Island House Hotel in 1852. Norman and Julia Rexford are the honored pioneers of Blue Island, the first to build a home and make permanent location on “the blue island” in 1835. The …

Wade Errett was an early owner of The Standard, a weekly newspaper he purchased in 1894. Blue Island has a long newspaper and printing history, and as the largest village in the area, Blue Island’s weekly presses supplied the news for neighboring communities. The first paper printed in Blue Island was the Weekly Herald, started in the spring of 1873, …

Although today much altered, this large but simply constructed home was first built in 1836 as a Court House in Liverpool, Indiana. When the county seat moved to Crown Point, Carlton Wadhams had the building taken apart and sent by raft down the Calumet River to Blue Island where, in 1844, it was erected on the northwest corner of Western …

Theodore Guenther was born in Saxony, Germany, on December 25, 1823, and came to the United States in 1846, where he married Katherine Rich, a native of Bavaria. The family moved to Blue Island in the 1850s and were among the earliest German settlers. Like so many German immigrants of his day, Guenther was first a carpenter and cabinet maker. …