Affectionately known as “Aunt Helen,” Helen Kenyon spent 66 years in the same home at 5427 Main Street in Downers Grove. She passed away at the age of 90, remembered by friends and neighbors as cheerful, generous, and kind—a life that stretched across nearly a century of change.
Helen was born on a farm in York Center, DuPage County, in 1846. Her parents had come from New York in 1842 and raised a large family of ten children. Two of her brothers, Oliver P. Kenyon and Nickolas R. Kenyon, served in the Civil War. In 1871, her father moved the family to Downers Grove, purchasing the house on Main Street—a former Baptist parsonage built in 1856. The church sold the home to help finance the rebuilding of its sanctuary after a fire. The move was intended to give the Kenyon children greater educational opportunities.
Helen never married and continued living with her parents into adulthood. After her father’s death in 1888 and her mother’s in 1906, she remained in the family home. Her mother, remarkably, took up lace making at the age of 89, with one of her works earning an honorable mention at the 1893 Columbian Exposition.
Helen herself valued education. She studied in Evanston, where she boarded with reformer Frances Willard, and she maintained a lifelong love of reading—keeping up with the world by devouring several newspapers each day. Longevity seemed to run in the Kenyon family; several relatives lived past 100, and one cousin was noted as the last surviving pensioner of the War of 1812 at the time of his death in 1906.
Shortly before her passing, the Downers Grove Reporter captured Helen’s personal philosophy in her own words: “Cheerfulness—the desire to give something to each person she meets, a flower, a plant, a thought, a funny story, a home remedy, or a poem she has memorized. And kindness—saying only good of people.”
The Kenyon family is remembered in Downers Grove with Kenyon Avenue, located just south of 55th Street. Helen died on February 28, 1937, and rests with her parents in Oak Hill Cemetery. Her long life and her spirit of cheer and kindness remain a part of Downers Grove’s history.
See “What’s In A Name?” news article featuring Kenyon Street here.
“The Parsonage” where Helen Kenyon lived was approved as a Historic Home in 2025. See the Historic Home post here.
See the news story here.
