This text is a "Paper read by Slason Thompson at the opening dinner in the Wigwam, November 3, 1928...," p. 5, the original 1890s frame building having been replaced by the the current masonry structure designed by Harrie T. Lindeberg, architect. Thompson reviews the history of the club since its origins in an informal seven-hole golf course at Fairlawn (C. B. Farwell estate) and adjacent Forest Park, the bluff top public park above the shoreline in Lake Forest, according to him 1893 but according to Anna Farwell (Mrs. Reginald) De Koven, this was 1892 (Musician and His Wife, 1926, p. 183).  

Thompson's informal account, for a social occasion, was expressed with considerable humor.  But it describes the first course on the lake front and then the second one, 1894 through early 1896, on the Leander McCormick farm west of the tracks about a mile south of the business district in Lake Forest.  Robert Foulis, from Old Tom Morris's shop in St. Andrews, Scotland, was the golf pro, or teacher and club maker and the club house was a pre-purposed chiken coup.  Generally Thompson's first-hand account is full of lore of the early club, which in December 1895 acquired Henry Ives Cobb's Rockwood farm further north on Green Bay Road's west side, with its commodious Shinlgle Style house of 1890-93, according to the College 's Stentor (1893) the largest house in town in 1893. Cobb moved east in 1895.

Thompson describers in some detail the early course layouts, the lengths of holes and their lcoations, who planned them, etc.     

Onwentsia club, Green Bay Road, Lake Forest, Ill.

Forest Park, Lake Road, Lake Forest, Ill.  

Lake Forest Country Day School (east end of former Leander McCormick estate), Green Bay Road, Lake Forest, Ill.