Will County IL Archives Biographies.....Riley, Hon Thomas H 
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Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com November 10, 2007, 1:56 pm

Author: Genealogical and Biographical Record of Will County

HON. THOMAS H. RILEY. To many of the people of this county Mr. Riley is best 
known through his efforts in behalf of drainage and deep-water interests and 
through his incumbency of various important offices. Always a Democrat, he has 
never wavered in his allegiance to this party. In 1877 he was elected alderman 
from the first ward, two years later was elected from the second ward, which 
he afterward represented in the council for five terms, making seven terms 
altogether. His object in accepting the office was in order that he might use 
his influence to secure the adoption of separate systems of sewage and 
drainage, and upon accomplishing that he refused to serve further in the 
council. In 1886 Mr. Riley was elected to the state legislature, serving in 
the thirty-fifth assembly. He offered the joint resolution in the house of 
representatives creating a commission to solve the drainage problem of 
Chicago. He was made a member of the same, with instructions to report to the 
thirty-sixth assembly a practicable method of disposing of the sewage of 
Chicago. The other members of the committee were John A. Roche (then mayor of 
Chicago), T. C. McMillan and Barney Eckhart, both of Chicago, and A. J. Bell, 
of Peoria. Accompanying their report was what is now known as the drainage 
law, of which Mr. Riley had charge in the house and L. E. Cooley in the 
senate, and which they were instrumental in passing. Later they secured what 
was known as the passage of the "Little Waterway bill" to connect, by the 
fourteen-foot channel, the present drainage channel in Lockport and the 
Mississippi River. After a hard fight this bill became a law by vote of the 
legislature in 1894, but was vetoed by Governor Altgeld, and, as a result of 
the veto, the people are now holding deep-water conventions to secure the 
accomplishment of the same results. In the thirty-fifth assembly Mr. Riley was 
a member of the revenue, canals and drainage and warehouse committees. A 
resident of Joliet since 1872, Mr. Riley was born in Syracuse, N. Y., February 
20, 1848, a descendant of a Danish family by whom the name was spelled 
Reilley, but this was shortened to its present form by our subject for 
convenience. He was second of seven children, all but one of whom attained 
maturity, and five sons are now living, three being in this county. One son, 
James, now of Little Falls, N. Y., was a soldier in Scott's Nine Hundred from 
New York during the Civil war. The father, Edward Reilley, was born in County 
Leitrim, Ireland, in 1803, and came to the United States in 1826, and in early 
manhood settled in St. Lawrence County, N. Y., later removing to a farm now 
within the city limits of Syracuse, N. Y. He became interested in the 
manufacture of salt, which he continued for years. In 1881 he came to Joliet, 
and died here three years later, at eighty-two years of age. He married Julia 
Black, who was born in County Kildare, Ireland, of French descent, and died in 
Syracuse, N. Y. Leaving home in 1865, our subject went to the Pennsylvania oil 
region, where he engaged in teaming for a year, and then had a boat of his own 
on the Allegheny River, later had three boats on Erie canal, making Syracuse 
his headquarters. In the spring of 1872 he came to Joliet and for a few months 
was a steersman on the canal. Afterward he clerked in a grocery until the 
spring of 1875, when he started in business for himself. Later he was 
proprietor of the Auburn house, and in 1883 started in the artesian well 
business, sinking several wells, the deepest of which was twelve hundred feet. 
In 1886 he sold out and started in the undertaking business at No. 412 Van 
Buren street, where he had erected a building in 1882, and since then he has 
engaged steadily in business as an undertaker and funeral director. He built 
seven stores, all of two stories, fronting on Van Buren street, also a livery 
barn. Meantime, he has also engaged in general contracting, and had the 
contracts for the water works at the state penitentiary, also for two miles of 
dyke in the drainage ditch, the principal sewers of Joliet, and the water 
works and conduits taking the water to the different mills of the Illinois 
Steel Company. In 1890 he laid out Riley's Riverview Driving Park, in which he 
invested $25,000 in improvements, and which has a half-mile track that is not 
only the best in the state, but also one of the finest in the country. For two 
years he held a county fair, but the second year lost $5,000, so abandoned the 
enterprise. He probably did what no other man in the United States ever 
attempted, namely, he himself organized the Will County Mechanical and 
Agricultural Association, putting up the best buildings for that purpose in 
the state, and equipping the same. Coming as it did right after the World's 
Fair it was not appreciated by the people and the large deficit was due to 
that. In Joliet Mr. Riley married Miss Bridget Barry, whose father, Edmund 
Barry, was an early settler of this city and an employe on the Chicago & Alton 
Railroad. During the existence of the Illinois Valley Circuit Mr. Riley 
represented the whole of the Joliet interest and therefore was one of its 
prominent members. Fraternally he is connected with the Modern Woodmen of 
America and the Court of Honor. The noble impulses of Mr. Riley's public-
spirited measures are beginning to be understood and appreciated by the wise 
and broad minded citizens of Joliet, where he has been a conspicious figure 
for many years and where he is justly held in high esteem as an honored man 
and a representative citizen. He has not sought his own aggrandizement, but 
has planned for the best interest of the city that claims him and that is 
justly proud of him as one of its best citizens. His fight in the thirty-fifth 
assembly against the Hurd bill and his hard work in favor of the drainage law 
under which the now famous drainage channel was constructed are a matter of 
history from which future generations will learn useful lessons of unselfish 
devotion to progress and higher civilization.

Additional Comments:
Genealogical and Biographical Record of Will County Illinois Containing 
Biographies of Well Known Citizens of the Past and Present, Biographical 
Publishing Company, Chicago, 1900

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