Vanderlinden Was A Chicago Cop with Good Aim

GoogleBooks continues to amaze me with the gems I discover. 

A 1912 report of the Chicago General Superintendent of Police for the year ending on 31 December 1911 contained two references to Frank Vanderlinden. Vanderlinden was on the Chicago police force in the early twentieth century. 

Report of the General Superintendent of Police of the City of Chicago to the City Council for the Fiscal Year Ending December 31, 1911, Department of Police, Chicago, 1912, title page.

 Vanderlinden was one of the best marksmen on Chicago's police force in 1911. The chart below mentioned his score on a firing test. It also indicated he was a patrolmen in precinct 14.

p. 89

Vanderlinden also appears on a list officers who apprehended fugitives in Chicago in 1911. He and officer Griffith apparently caught Frank Helden on 10 October 1911 in Porter, Indiana, on a rape charge.

p. 41.

The front portion of the book provided a verbal description of the police precincts within the city of Chicago, including the 14th where Vanderlinden was supposedly assigned in 1911. The seven square mile district was bounded as indicated on page 17 of the Report.

Quite a few interesting items in this report. I'll have to try and map out the precinct's boundaries. It should not be too difficult as it is after the street renumbering in Chicago and a modern map websites should help.

I will have to see if Vanderlinden is mentioned in additional reports from the superintendent.

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Vanderlinden is the son-in-law of Thomas and Elizabeth (Watson) Frame--English immigrants to Chicago from County Cumberland, England. He married their daughter Hannah in Chicago in the late 1800s.
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Citation reminder: We are a strong believe in citing genealogical source material in the spriit of Evidence Explained. However, we choose not to include properly formatted citations in these blog posts. There's always enough information in the post to create a citation and full citations are included in my how-to newsletter Casefile Clues. 

An 1886 Hyde Park Fireman--Hook and Ladder Company Driver

Early twentieth-century records indicated that Frank Vanderlinden was a Chicago policeman. Apparently in the 1880s he worked for the Hyde Park, Illinois, fire department as indicated in this partial clipping from a local newspaper.

Date: Saturday, May 1, 1886  

 

Paper: Hyde Park Herald (Chicago, IL) --obtained on Genealogybank.com 

The article also indicates that the drivers of the hook and ladder companies received a pay raise of $5 per month, from $55 to $65.

If your relative was a public employee, there may be some mention of him in a local newspaper--if only to indicate that he had been hired at a regular meeting.

Tracking Down a Policeman's Career

Entry for Frank Vanderlinden, 1895 Chicago City Directory, obtained on  Fold3 .

Frank Vanderlinden was a Chicago City police officer for several years. I'm trying to determine when he enlisted on the force and approximately when he retired. Census records are one way to work on that, but the ten year gap between the enumerations and the lack of an 1890 census makes estimating his work time a little difficult given the time period when he worked.

Fortunately there are city directories that can help me with this problem. The image on this post comes from the 1895 Chicago City Directory obtained on Fold3. I'm hoping to use additional directories to fill in a few details about Frank. We'll have occasional updates on him as information is located. Frank's wife was Hannah Frame--sister of my children's great-great-grandfather William Frame.

Fold3 has many of the Chicago city directories online--and those for other cities as well..