Nathan Alonzo Belden was born on December 11, 1819, in Greenfield, Saratoga County, New York. He was one of nine children born to Simon Belden and Calsina Hickox Belden, descendants of early English settlers who arrived in America in the 1600s. His grandfather, William Belden, served in the Revolutionary War, and Nathan was likely named after his maternal grandfather, Nathan Hickox.
Nathan learned the blacksmith trade from his father. At age 25, he married Fannie Randall, and in 1844 the young couple set out for Illinois, where Nathan had friends. While traveling to Cherry Valley, they stopped in Downers Grove. There, Nathan happened to meet Pierce Downer, who asked him to repair a horseshoe. Recognizing the need for a blacksmith in the growing settlement, Nathan decided to remain in Downers Grove. He built a home on Maple Avenue, where he and Fannie raised three children: Rachel (born 1844), George (born 1846), and Callie (born 1848).
Belden quickly became an active and dedicated member of the community. Along with neighbors Cotes and Foster, he donated time and materials to help construct a Methodist church building in the 1850s for a congregation that had been established in the 1830s. Nathan was a faithful member of the church, tending the wood stoves to heat the building during services and bringing his melodeon each Sunday to provide music.
Nathan lived to see the beginning of the Civil War but not its end. He died in April 1864 at the age of 44 and was buried in Main Street Cemetery, not far from his home and the church he helped build.
His legacy continued through his family. After Nathan’s death, Fannie raised their three children and remained in Downers Grove until her death in 1906. All three children married and gave her grandchildren. Rachel married Robert Rockwell and had two children before her death in 1877. George Randall Belden married Mary Barr and later moved to Iowa, where he died in 1919. Callie married Henry Bush, the son of Nancy Stanley Bush and Edward Bush, and they made their home in Downers Grove, raising two sons, Guy and Merritt.
Callie and Henry initially lived on a farm in Lisle before moving to a house on Carpenter Street in 1885. After Henry’s death in 1892, Callie married T. S. Rogers, a Civil War veteran and the first president of Downers Grove. Callie died in 1936 and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery with other family members.
Nathan’s grandson Guy Bush served as president of the Downers Grove Village Board in 1897–98 and later represented the community through six terms in the Illinois State Legislature. Guy’s daughter, Lucile Bush, born in 1898, became an educator who worked at Hull House in Chicago, helped found the American Association of University Women, and was invited to the White House by President Eisenhower in 1960 for a national conference on children and youth. Lucile lived her entire life in Downers Grove and died in 1999 at the age of 101.
None of these contributions to the history of Downers Grove would have occurred had Nathan Alonzo Belden not stopped one day to shoe Pierce Downers’ horse. Nathan Alonzo Belden is truly a founder of Downers Grove—and one whose story deserves to be remembered.
Researched and written by Lois Sterba.
