Ferdinand Berghorn Jr.

Making It Home Newcomers
Ferdinand Berghorn Jr.

In 1916, Ferdinand Berghorn Jr. was working as a chauffeur for the Edgar Uihlein family, who lived on Waukegan Road.

Ferdinand Berghorn Jr., c. 1914.

Ferdinand Berghorn Jr., c. 1914.

Lake Forest police department, c. 1917. Historically this was a tricky time for law enforcement: with the increase in automobile use came a corresponding rise in speeding, accidents, and car thefts. A January 1917 issue of the Lake Forester describes a hit-and-run accident in Highland Park where the perpetrators ran into a car driven by Sergeant Potter of Fort Sheridan and then raced away to the north. The police in Lake Forest were notified of the crime via telephone. According to the account, “Policeman Berghorn spotted them on McKinley road but they refused to stop when ordered. At the bend in the road on the north edge of town Berghorn ran up beside them, caught hold of the machine, and put them under arrest. In trying to turn their machine they ran it into a tree and tipped over.” No one was hurt – Ferdinand Berghorn turned the criminals over to the Highland Park police.

Lake Forest police department, c. 1917. Historically this was a tricky time for law enforcement: with the increase in automobile use came a corresponding rise in speeding, accidents, and car thefts. A January 1917 issue of the Lake Forester describes a hit-and-run accident in Highland Park where the perpetrators ran into a car driven by Sergeant Potter of Fort Sheridan and then raced away to the north. The police in Lake Forest were notified of the crime via telephone. According to the account, “Policeman Berghorn spotted them on McKinley road but they refused to stop when ordered. At the bend in the road on the north edge of town Berghorn ran up beside them, caught hold of the machine, and put them under arrest. In trying to turn their machine they ran it into a tree and tipped over.” No one was hurt – Ferdinand Berghorn turned the criminals over to the Highland Park police.

Ferdinand Berghorn Jr, c. 1917, at the Lake Forest train station on a police motorcycle. In the 1910s and 1920s, Lake Forest’s police officers used bicycles and motorcycles for their patrols.

Ferdinand Berghorn Jr, c. 1917, at the Lake Forest train station on a police motorcycle. In the 1910s and 1920s, Lake Forest’s police officers used bicycles and motorcycles for their patrols.

The Berghorn family arrived in the United States from Germany in the 1880s; their journey west included stops in New Haven and Cincinnati before settling in Chicago in 1895. Ferdinand Berghorn Sr. was a blacksmith and horse shoer – his son Ferdinand Junior found work by 1912, as a delivery driver for Marshall Field in one of the company’s first motorized delivery trucks. By the next year, Ferdinand Junior had translated these driving skills to a job in Lake Forest as a chauffeur.
In 1916, Ferdinand met and married Ruth Peterson, a Swedish immigrant, also a recent arrival to Lake Forest. They had one son, Fred.
Berghorn joined the Lake Forest police force as policeman #8, a position he retained into the 1920s. As a police officer, he was often asked to keep an eye on empty homes when families went out of town for the summer. He devised a rather ingenious early “security system” to help him out by utilizing the city’s telephone exchange. He fixed up a series of strings in the vacant homes which were tied to the family telephone. If the strings were disturbed, they would signal the switchboard at the central telephone exchange, where the women on staff would in turn call the police. This system apparently saved a few homes from being robbed.