More interesting Cuneo/Hawthorn history

A glimpse of the opulent country lifestyles led by former business tycoons like Samuel Insull and John Cuneo Sr. is still available at the Cuneo Museum and Gardens in Vernon Hills.

Insull, an English-born utilities magnate who founded Commonwealth Edison and was once Thomas Edison's private secretary, bought a 168-acre farm south of Libertyville in 1907. Over the next few years, he bought most of the surrounding farms and the estate grew to 4,000 acres.

In 1914, Insull built a Venetian-style mansion off Milwaukee Avenue, which is now the Cuneo Museum.

Insull lost Hawthorn Farm and most of his wealth in the Depression. In 1937, a year after Insull's death in Paris, Chicago printing magnate John Cuneo Sr. bought the Insull mansion and part of Hawthorn Farm. He eventually acquired about 2,000 acres in the area.

The Insull estate was sold off in parcels in the 1930s, according to John Byrne, a former historian at the Cuneo Museum who was raised on the Cuneo farm where his father was farm manager.

"Adlai Stevenson bought one," he said in a 2004 interview with the News-Sun. "(Joseph Medill) Patterson, the (Chicago) Tribune Patterson, bought one. Cuneo bought the main house and about 800 acres."

Patterson's mansion, which was later bought by Cuneo, was used by Hewitt and Associates after the land was sold, he said. Cuneo acquired several other area properties as well.

"It was the fashion in those days," Byrne said. "They had all this capital and wanted to do something with it."

Cuneo was a Yale graduate who grew up on Chicago's Gold Coast. His father had made a fortune in Chicago real estate, and Cuneo went into the printing business.

Cuneo studied stock raising and bred prize-winning Hackney horses on his new estate, and stocked the farm with hogs, cattle, chickens and turkeys, Byrne said.

Cuneo started Hawthorn Mellody Dairy in the 1940s. "He hired two prominent dairymen who acquired a prize milking herd," Byrne said. "He started out selling locally, but in 10 years they had a fleet of trucks and were selling milk all over the Chicago area."

Hawthorn Mellody Farms had a huge chicken operation on the east side of Butterfield Road, where luxury homes in Zale Homes' Gregg's Landing development now stand.

Cuneo sold the dairy to National Industries, a Louisville, Ky.-based conglomerate, in 1967. The new owners managed the farm park for two years, then closed the entire operation in 1970.

The Cuneos started selling off chunks of the estate in 1970. Cuneo died in 1977, and his wife, Julia, died in 1990. Their son, John Cuneo Jr., still lives in Fremont Township and is active with the Cuneo Foundation, which is scaled down but will continue to offer scholarship opportunities.

Courtesy of Jeannie Schweiger