Sauerkraut Day in Forreston, Illinois

Sometimes it's the little details
that make a big difference.
When choosing
a masquerade costume
pick the funniest hat,
silliest fake mustache
and you can look pretty decent. 
But if you really want to get the laughs
pay attention to your shoes.

Don't opt for comfort, style,
or practicality.
Go for foolish authenticity,
even if it makes your feet hurt.
(Of course, still watch where you step.)

That's what will make
a good costume
a great costume.

Wooden footwear certainly worked for these fellas.
They called themselves
"The Little German Band".
It was Oct 2nd, 1913, 
and they wanted
to look their best

for Sauerkraut Day

in Forreston, Illinois,
. 

It was 1913, a time when "boosterism" was taking hold of America's small towns. Towns competed with each other to attract new homesteaders, businesses, factories, railroad depots, and tourists. The folk in the little village of Forreston, Illinois thought that sauerkraut might do the trick. Pickled cabbage makes the perfect condiment for any sandwich. Who doesn't love it? And if it was offered for free and accompanied by a little German band, wouldn't that attract nearly everyone in a hundred miles? The town fathers of Forreston certainly hoped it would.  

 

Forreston is a village in Ogle County, Illinois, about 100 miles west of Chicago. It was established in 1854 and named for the vast forests that once grew in this area of northern Illinois. It was settled by predominately German families, so, of course, sauerkraut was in their blood, so to speak. In 1913 it had a population of around 870 residents. The streets were laid out on the flat terrain in a neat grid using the common names of trees: Willow, Pine, Elm, Birch, Cherry, Blasam, White Oak,  Walnut, Ash, Chestnut, Plum, Locust, Hickory.

Evidently birds liked what they saw in Forreston, too. How someone trained a pigeon to operate a camera remains a mystery.   

According to a history of the event, published on 9 October 1930 by the Forreston Journal, the idea for the festival came from a local business man, Justus DeGraff, who, while on a trip out west, happened to stop in Ackley, Iowa during their "Sauerkraut Day". Ackley is about 200 miles west of Forreston and like Forreston was home to many German immigrants. DeGraff was impressed by how this small community celebrated its culture and hospitality by offering visitors a feast centered around this simple German dish. Having started its first Sauerkraut fest in 1902, by 1912 it had earned a national reputation for its generous townsfolk.  

Edwardsville IL Intelligencer 
30 August 1912

In 1912 many newspapers around the country reported on Ackley's Sauerkraut Day where "10,000 visitors" partook of "a dozen barrels of kraut and 1,000 pounds of wienerwurst." And it was all for free. 

Yet those 10,000 visitors translated into a very large number of potential sales for merchants and vendors. Mr. DeGraff surely didn't need much more to convince Forreston's town council to try the same event for their town. And so it was decided that Thursday 2 October 1913 would be their first "Sauerkraut Day". 

In this decade the roads and streets of Forreston were still unpaved and most traffic was horse-powered. The junction of Main Street and 1st Avenue was chosen as the event's center. A simple raised platform was built for speakers and band concerts. There were also booths for vendors and other carnival-like games and entertainments. 

In this photo a throng of men, women, and children gather around a stage where a half dozen men are seated. The photographer helpfully added a caption of Sauerkraut Day, Forreston, ILL. 10-2-13. I expect this unmarked postcard was taken early in the morning that day and then hurriedly printed to sell later that afternoon.

Forreston, Illinois, 1st Ave and Main St. 
Source: Google Maps, 2012 

Today the modern view in Forreston shows the same scene has somewhat changed but still retains the layout of the buildings. Like many small towns in America, careful historic preservation is rare to see because of it is so expensive. It is sadly more common for decaying architecture to be sheathed in plywood siding with cheap vinyl windows. The essence of history is all about entropy. 

In this postcard photo the camera looks back toward the same intersection, but on a normal day instead of Sauerkraut Day. The caption reads "South Side Main St.  Forreston, Ill." (The number is a photographer's reference for the film negative.) On the right we can see Forreston's Central House Hotel, and nest to it on the left is a large brick building where, I think in the second floor right window, the photographer set up his camera for the previous street photo.  

Forreston, Illinois, Main St. and 1st Ave.  
Source: Google Maps, 2012 

In Google's Steet View from 2012, the hotel is gone but the other building remains. Taking a virtual Google walk around Forreston's streets lets us see a commemorative stone in the front peak with the name "Carmon Block 1902". It's a large structure similar to a townhall but I'm not sure what it's original purpose was. Forreston had an "Opera House" in the 1900s but I don't think this was it. It may have been a fraternal society's development which rented out the ground floor spaces to small businesses. Today it is the location of a Subway® sandwich shop.

Forreston's little German Band also posed for formal group photo in the photographer's studio. Standing in a line are six men dressed in zany rube outfits and holding brass instruments, two cornets, trombone, two tenor horns, and a baritone. Several sport fake beards that give them a real rustic look of German farmers. On the side of the photo is another caption for Sauerkraut Day, Oct 2nd '13. I think this was likely taken earlier in the day as their wooden clogs are fairly clean.  

On the back is a short note. 

The fellow with
the X is
Brother John

Humor in this era used a great many stereotypes, many that would be unacceptable today, and making fun of rural folk was classic mockery. It's likely than many, if not all of them, were from German families who had immigrated to America in the mid-19th century. Because I have a sizeable collection of German and Austrian postcards of music hall comics, I know that back in the old country the country bumpkin was a standard character in Germanic humor. So it's not surprising that for Sauerkraut Day in Forreston the local jokers would invent a comical German brass band to entertain their neighbors and visitors.

This type of musical clowning was often called a "rube band" and I've featured photos of them a few times on my blog. The Zanesville Rube Band from Ohio was started as a kind of booster club entertainment in 1905 to promote interest in Zanesville. In Trick or Treat? another Ohio brass band posed in crazy yokel costumes for a postcard that was surely a souvenir from a town festival like Sauerkraut Day.    

As I began writing my story this week I discovered three more postcards from Forreston on eBay. I purchased them but they have not yet arrived in time for this story so I am temporarily using the image from the sellers' listings. Next week I will have better scans. 

This photo is labeled Sauerkraut Day, Forreston, Ill. Oct. 2, '13 and looks to be taken during the height of the fest's inaugural event. It shows several hundred people standing around the platform stage seen in my first street photo. The position in front of the Central Hotel was probably for the convenience of visiting dignitaries who were invited to speak to the crowd.  

A couple days later the Rockford Register-Gazette reported on Forreston's big event.  

                                    FORRESTON 

    Forreston, Oct 3. — Sauerkraut day, Tuesday, Oct 2. drew one of the largest crowd that ever was in Forreston.  The program began at 9:30 a. m. with music by the Lanark and Forreston bands.  The address of welcome was given by Mayor Frank Wertz, the response by Hon. C. W. Middlekauff of Lanark, who was born and raised in Forreston. W. V. Geiser of Freeport gave an address in German and Judge A. J. Clarity of Freeport gave the address in English. 

    Sauerkraut, wieners, rye bread and coffee were given to all, free from 12 till 2.  Byron and Forreston ball teams crossed bats.  Free exhibitions were given by the "Ball Family."  Foot races, blind cart races, pillow fights, pie eating contests. 

    Several minor accidents occurred but fortunately nothing serious.  A three-year-old child from Freeport got separated from its mother and got in front of an auto, one wheel passing over him, bruising his hip. Several parties had their pockets picked for various sums.  A Freeport man had $1,000 in certificates taken from his pocket.  He telephoned the Freeport bank not to cash same.  The bands gave an evening concert from 5:30 to 8. A dance in the M. W. A. hall attracted many in the evening.

Forreston's first Sauerkraut Day in 1913 proved such a success that it was repeated in 1914 and again in 1915.  In this photo from 1915 the crowds of people are elbow to elbow and are listening to a band seated on a stage at the back right. 

On 21 September 1915 , a week before Sauerkraut Day, Forrester's town booster club organized an enormous road trip of "fifty automobiles carrying 225 people" to travel to 11 nearby towns for promotion of their event. It included the Forreston band of eighteen pieces and seven members of the Young Ladies Glee Club who sang at concerts in each town accompanied by the band. 

A few years ago I wrote two stories about similar road trips made  by town boosters for a little place in Kansas. In On The Road in White City, Kansas and Street Music in White City, Kansas I presented photos of town bands and boosters' automobiles arranged on streets not unlike those in Forreston. 

In 1915 the Rockford newspaper published a detailed program of Forreston's Sauerkraut Day. Besides the Forreston band there was another one from nearby Henney, IL and the now "celebrated German band", too. They were all on the schedule throughout the day from 9:30 AM when the festival began until it ended with a two hour double band concert from 7:00 to 9:00 PM followed by dance and picture show at the opera house. 

 

In this second postcard, captioned "Eating Sauerkraut, Forreston Ill Sept 20 '15, a large crowd are in a park or maybe a baseball field since there are bleachers in the back. In the foreground left is a wagon with a band seated precariously on chairs. Most of the musicians wear traditional bandsmen's uniforms but one tenor horn on the end looks to be dressed in a hayseed outfit. I wonder if he is tapping his clogs to keep time. 

According to the 1930 Forreston Journal's report of the event, the first Sauerkaut Day in 1913 used just three kettles for cooking the kraut. In 1930 they needed nine. In 1922 over 20,000 people came to Forreston's festival consuming 400 gallons of sauerkraut, 800 pounds of wieners (hot dogs), 700 loaves of rye bread, along with thousands of cookies and hundreds of gallons of coffee. Over several decades the town continued its annual Sauerkraut Festival  tradition with parades, floats, carnival attractions, and, of course, lots of sauerkraut. The only exception was during the first World War when the festival changed to a "Barbecue Day" in order to avoid offending returning veterans who had had their fill of kraut. The town continued to advertise its fall festival until sometime in the 60s when it was quietly discontinued. 

 

Forreston, still a small town in 2025 with around 1,400 residents, recently revived its Sauerkraut Day a few years ago though I'm not sure if it is still free or as well attended. It has a lot of competition now. 

In Illinois this past year you could attend the Rhubarb Fest in Aledo; Sweetcorn festivals in Dekalb, Hoopston, and Mendota; a Popcorn Fest in Casey; a Grape Fest in Nauvoo; a Chocolate Fest in Galesburg; and even a Sandwich Fair in Sandwich, Illinois, just to name a few as there are many more.  And in 2023 Ackley, Iowa celebrated the 120th anniversary of its Sauerkraut Day.

I think I'll pass on having seconds, thank you very much.  

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where everyone is taking to the streets.