Charles Weeghman-- Part 2: Weeghman Park Became Wrigley Field

He also had a great interest in baseball.  In 1911, he tried to purchase controlling interest in the St. louis Cardinals, but failed.  He then founded the Chicago Whales in the new Federal League and built a new steel and concrete stadium he named Weeghman Park.  He chose the site specifically because it was by the "L" tracks.

After the federal league folded, he merged the Whales with the Chicago Cubs and became the majority owner and moved the Cubs into his new park which is now known better as Wrigley Field.

On August 16, 1921, he sponsored the first statewide rally of the KKK on his property in Lake Zurich, Illinois.  It was estimated that some 12,000 attended and another 2,000 were initiated into the organization.

His lunch counter business lost favor with the public and he had to sell more and more of the Cubs to chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr.  He was completely out of the Cubs by 1918.

--DaCoot

KKK in Chicago in the 1920s-- Part 2: On the Farm of Charles Weeghman

"The restored KKK's membership wasn't limited to the lower middle class, the traditional breeding ground of xenophobic political movements.  The mass initiation ceremony was held on a farm near Lake Zurich owned by Charles Weeghman, whose string of cheap Loop restaurants had made him a millionaire.

Weeghman built the North Side ballpark subsequently known as Wrigley Field and owned the Cubs from 1916-1918.

"Perhaps he was one of the business leaders attracted to the KKK by its hostility to the union movement, which the Klan equated with the Bolsheviks who recently seized power in Russia, a powerful argument during a wave of bitter strikes in America."

I looked up the location of Weeghman's farm and saw that it wasa 250-acre farm at the intersection of today's US-12 and Old Rand Road between Lake Zurich and Barrington.  Old Rand Road was the name of US-12 before the byopass was built and still exists.

--Cooter