BURIED TOGETHER
Partner Robert Allerton, buried together
Queer Places:
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL
Allerton Garden, 3530 Papalina Rd, Kalaheo, HI 96741, Stati Uniti
On March 4, 1960, Robert Allerton,
86, adopted 60-years-old John Wyatt Gregg (November 7, 1899 – May 1, 1986). They had
met 38 years previously at a "Father-Son" fraternity banquet at the
University of Illinois where the single and childless Allerton, 49, had
been invited by a friend to stand in as a "father" to a then 22 year-old
Gregg, who was an orphan. Interviewed in the 1980s, Gregg explained:
"Robert Allerton was invited over there for lunch for a football game and
he didn't have a son and I didn't have a father so we were paired off and
lived happily ever after. ... We just gradually eased into a father-son
relationship" (Allerton 1984, 1-2).
Their was the first adoption of an
adult child in the Illinois state's history, and in Hawai'i, where the two had
lived for twenty years, so the adoption was newsworthy in both places.
The First National Bank of Chicago, which had been co-founded by
Allerton's father, issued a statement on behalf of the pair explaining
that, "Under a recent change in the Illinois law which became effective
the first of this year, [Allerton] has finally been able to legally adopt
John Wyatt Gregg who has stood in the relationship of a son for thirty
years." The Champaign-Urbana Courier, which covered the jurisdiction where
the adoption took place, announced: "Companion Is Adopted by R. Allerton"
(March 5, 1960).
John Wyatt Gregg was born on November 7, 1899, in Milwaukee, the third child of
greengrocer James Richmond Gregg and his wife, Kate Scranton Gregg.
At the time of his graduation from high school and the simultaneous death
of his mother from breast cancer, he was drafted into the army but got no
further than the Student Army Training Corps. The war ended soon
thereafter and he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in chemical
engineering. His father died in 1921, leaving the Gregg siblings orphaned
and John transferred to the University of Illinois, after increasingly
finding himself drawn toward architecture, which Wisconsin did not offer.
As a member of Zeta Psi at Wisconsin he was able to join a sister chapter
at Illinois and thus lived in the fraternity house during his first year
at Illinois, in the autumn of 1922. It was there that he would meet
Allerton, at a Zeta Psi "Father-Son" banquet, where Allerton, who had been
involved with the University for some time, was asked to stand in as
Gregg's "father" (Allerton n.d., 17-18; Soruika and Klemt, 52; Chicago
Tribune 1960).
Immediately upon graduation Gregg traveled in
Europe—England, Holland, and Germany—by his telling alone, though financed
by his new patron: "Robert Allerton gave me a nice check to get me going"
(Allerton n.d., 18; Nancy R----; New York Times 1926). Upon his
return he began work as a draftsman, and later job captain, for David
Adler, the Chicago architect; he had landed the job through Allerton's
connections. At first he lived in Chicago near his friends Paul and
Dorothy Schweikher; Paul was a fellow draftsman at Adler's studio.
Schweiker recalled: "[John] was a companion to Robert Allerton. Not
sure what you would call it at that time. ... and he was very
social, in the social swim. The rest of us didn't have that – John brought
it in". Though this recollection dates from many years later,
clearly Gregg's friend at the time recognized that there was something
unique – indeed unidentifiable – about his relationship with Allerton.
The first mention of Robert Allerton and John Gregg
together appeared in 1928, two years after Gregg had graduated from
Illinois, when the Chicago Tribune announced those notables attending the
opera, cataloguing who sat in whose box: "With Mrs. Potter Palmer were
Mrs. Barrett Wendell, Mrs. Chauncey McCormick, Prince Galitzen, Robert
Allerton, and John Gregg" (7 December1928). By 1931,
the Tribune reported on the two traveling together, but the language of
their relationship had become solidified as father and son, despite the
fact that this was not legally so: "Robert Allerton, art collector,
intensive farmer, and one of our leading bachelors, has recently returned
from a trip to China and Siam with his adopted son, John Gregg" (Cousin
Eve). In December of 1933, the Tribune reported on a charity ball to
celebrate recent acquisitions by the Art Institute: "Mr. and Mrs. Potter
Palmer will have their son-in-law and daughter, the Oakleigh
Thorne-Lewises; Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg Fairbank, and Robert Allerton and his
adopted son, John Gregg, with them" (17 December 1933).
In 1930 John's employer's wife died in a car accident and,
combined with the effects of the Depression, Adler scaled back on his
practice. John Gregg was out of a job as well as a reason to remain
in Chicago. As Gregg put it in an oral history: "I came down here to
Monticello and Robert Allerton gave me the job running the farms with
Elmer [the farm manager]. ... He said now you take over managing the farms
with Elmer and you manage the gardens" (Allerton n.d., 20). Many
years later Gregg was still referring to his first years with Allerton as
ones of employment. He arrived at Monticello not just to manage the farms
but also with plans in hand for a restructuring of one of the ornamental
gardens that stretches outwards from Allerton House. Thus began
their architectural collaboration. Gregg explained in an interview:
"My father gave me jobs because he was not satisfied with things the way
they were, and so that I wouldn't feel that I was wasting all the talent
that I'd been trained for. He wanted to give me my head to try
things out. He was a marvelous father. Fathers and sons don't
always work that way" ("Legacy Continues").
My published books:
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