Barrington Hills

History

Barrington Center Church was built in 1853 by the Barrington Methodist Episcopal Society. A memorial plaque outside the church lists 91 area residents - one woman and 90 men - who served in the Civil War. Since the 1980s, the church building has been used by a Korean-American congregation, the New Friends Wesleyan Church. In 1860, about 18 immigrant families of Czech ancestry settled along the east side of the Fox River, near the future site of Fox River Grove. In 1867, land was purchased at the southwest corner of Church and River - Algonquin roads, and construction was started on St. John Nepomucene Chapel, named after the patron saint of Bohemia. Completed in 1873, the chapel was never served by its own priest, and currently services are scheduled only once a year. The chapel and its cemetery are owned by the St. John Nepomucene Catholic Cemetery Association, making it the only privately owned Catholic chapel and cemetery in the Rockford Diocese. Starting about 1900, business executives from Chicago, many of whom were tied to the railroad industry, purchased the rolling farms and subdivided them into large summer estates. One such individual was Spencer C. Otis Sr., who by 1910 is credited with purchasing of farmland along what was then Goose Lake Road but is now known as Otis Road and creating Hawthorne Farm. Otis was a "gentleman farmer" of the era. He worked in Chicago commerce, but his hobby was dairy farming on his large country estate which was led by his son Spencer Otis Jr. who attended agricultural school at the University of Illinois in Urbana. At this time the university was experimenting building round barns, of which became an Otis signature, as there were three built on the Hawthorne Farm. Several of Otis Senior's business associates, including…

Geography

According to the 2021 census gazetteer files, Barrington Hills has a total area of , of which (or 97.77%) is land and (or 2.23%) is water. The village is located within the Fox River watershed of the greater Illinois River waterway. There is about of shoreline along the east bank of the Fox River. Locally there are two perennial stream courses known to the west as Spring Creek and to the east as Flint Creek. Over the years, Flint Creek has been impounded such that along its course in the Cook County portion of the village are substantial lakes with such names as Hawley, Hawthorne, and Keene. Into the 1990s, farmers still worked about of land. Residential properties of over covered 30 percent. There is no downtown center, but the village has a small shopping strip along Route 14. With a population of 4,209 in 2010, Barrington Hills has kept its rural flavor as industrial and commercial development has sprung up around its borders. The village is bordered on the west by East Dundee, Carpentersville, and Algonquin; on the north by Fox River Grove, and Lake Barrington; on the east by Barrington and Inverness; and to the south and southeast by South Barrington, and Hoffman Estates. Barrington Hills is one of only three municipalities in Illinois (along with Aurora and Centralia) with land located among four counties. : Lake Barrington : Trout Valley / Cary North Barrington : Algonquin Barrington : East Dundee Inverness : Hoffman Estates / South Barrington

Race & ethnicity

Largest nearby schools

• Elgin High School
  High · Elgin · 2,750 students · 18:1 ratio
• Wm Fremd High School
  High · Palatine · 2,708 students · 16.8:1 ratio
• Palatine High School
  High · Palatine · 2,652 students · 14.2:1 ratio
• Schaumburg High School
  High · Schaumburg · 2,340 students · 16.1:1 ratio
• Hoffman Estates High School
  High · Hoffman Estates · 2,067 students · 13.6:1 ratio
• Streamwood High School
  High · Streamwood · 1,976 students · 17.5:1 ratio
• Barrington Mdle Sch- Prairie Cmps
  Middle · Barrington · 976 students · 13.2:1 ratio
• Barrington Middle Sch Station
  Middle · Barrington · 964 students · 14:1 ratio