Morton Grove is a village in Cook County, Illinois. Per the 2020 census, the population was 25,297.

The village is named after former United States Vice President Levi Parsons Morton, who helped finance the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad (later the Milwaukee Road), which going on for tracked the North Branch of the Chicago River in the area and acknowledged a stop at the antiquated Miller’s Mill. Miller’s Mill Road, now Lincoln Avenue, connected the former riverside sawmill to the township’s central settlement (Niles Center, now Skokie). The railroad stop facilitated trade and development; the upstart neighborhood grew plenty to incorporate in December 1895.

A handful of farmers from England arranged in 1830-1832, despite there physical no roads from Chicago, only original American trails, as the overwhelm of the Black Hawk War and the 1833 Treaty of Chicago led Native Americans to depart the areas. Farmers from Germany and Luxembourg started arriving by the stop of the decade, clearing the land by prickly the walnut, oak, hickory, elm and maple trees. Logs were initially hauled to a sawmill at Dutchman’s Point (later Niles, Illinois) at the corner of what became Milwaukee, Waukegan and Touhy Avenues, and stumps burned for charcoal that could next be hauled to heat homes in expanding Chicago. Immigrant John Miller erected a water-powered sawmill near where the Chicago River met the cutting edge Dempster Street hastily after 1841. This simplified homebuilding in the area, as competently as facilitated extra lumber sales. A road (first known as Miller’s Mill Road and after 1915 as Lincoln Avenue) allowed wood from the sawmill (and develop from open farms) to be hauled to the largest pact in the surrounding Niles Township (initially known as Niles Center and now Skokie) or even further, into Chicago. Around 1850, the “Northwestern” road to/from Chicago (now known as Milwaukee Avenue) was improved (partly using lumber from Miller’s sawmill) to become a single alleyway plank (toll) road. That abbreviated a four-day journey into Chicago to approximately a half day, and in addition to helped sales of manufacture and farm products from the rich bottomland. Lumber was furthermore hauled to Jefferson Park to fuel locomotives after the first railroads were built in the area. In 1858, Henry Harms built a toll road from the intersection of Ashland and Lincoln Avenues in Chicago to Skokie, where it met Miller’s Mill Road. Harms’ Road was later lengthy through Glenview.

In 1872, the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad bought Miller’s Mill and laid track (which became two lines in 1892). They then dug gravel for railroad and road use nearby, creating a quarry at what far along became Austin Park. The stop (later station) at what had been Miller’s Mill was named Morton Grove to praise one of the railroad’s New York financiers, Levi Parsons Morton. The Morton Grove agreement began growing from more or less 100 persons, and by 1874 had grown enough to have its first postmaster, Civil War veteran Medard Lochner. Rural mail encourage started 21 years later, although a blacksmith shop was opened at the deal by 1884, and a trading reveal and saloon had operated past 1847. The first subdivision (177 lots) was platted by real estate developers George Fernald and Fred Bingham in 1891, and a convalescent home for German-American aged was built in 1894. The village formally incorporated upon December 24, 1895, just eight days previously Morton became the Governor of New York. Morton Grove’s first mayor, George Harrer, was of German descent (and became the namesake of the village’s largest park), and his brother became Skokie’s mayor.