History of Rondout

Rondout was the area that I grew up in, spending 16 years of my life in the little col-de-sac neighborhood that was there. (1) I spent my years learning at Rondout Elementary School (2) from Kindergarten to 8th grade. I have never really known a home other than this town.

Rondout Elementary School is one of the oldest schools in the state. Founded in 1864, the school started out as a one-room schoolhouse with little students. Now it is a kindergarten through 8th grade school with around 150 students. Rondout also recently celebrated their 150th anniversary recently in 2014.

Rondout mainly served as a train junction in the early 1900s. It later formed an unincorporated community around the junction. With the community lacking true borders, it remained part of 3 counties; Libertyville, Lake Bluff, and Lake Forest. Although it wasn't a county of its own, Rondout still was able to form its own school district, with the elementary school falling beneath it.

Rondout is most known for the Rondout train robbery. This was one of the biggest train robberies in the US. It started 30 miles from Chicago on June 12, 1924, where 2 bandits climbed onto train 57, forcing the engineer and firemen to stop the train at Rondout, IL. Once they stopped, 4 more bandits boarded the train and pushed the 12 workers out of the train. They then managed to empty the entire train of all of its contents, totaling up to over $2,000,000. They had only made one mistake, being that the engineer stopped the train too far past the desired spot and one of the robbers left their post, which then got him shot 5 times by his own. After the robbery, the culprits were made out to be the Newton brothers; Doc Newton, Willis Newton, Joe Newton, and Jess Newton. They were all later found and convicted of their crimes, but authorities noticed that these brothers wouldn't have been able to know that there was $2,000,000 worth of contents on that train by themselves. They had to have had someone on the inside. That's when they found out about William J. Fahy. Fahy was a postal inspector since 1917. He was well respected in his career and was considered a "bad medicine for train robbers." Fahy, unfortunately, fell into some financial troubles until a point in 1923, where he and his wife suddenly starting flaunting a rather lavish lifestyle out of nowhere, seemingly overnight. Fahy was arrested with the Newton brothers because the evidence picked up from the train robbery seemed to point to Fahy giving internal information to the brothers for their heist. He was convicted and sent to 25 years in prison on federal mail theft charges.