LIBRARY OF- THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN IN MEMORY OF STEWART S. HOWE JOURNALISM CLASS OF 1928 STEWART S. HOWE FOUNDATION 977.31 J45h I .H.S. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://archive.org/details/historicchicagosOOjens HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES Described by George Peter Jensen Printed by Excella Press Chicago for CREATIVE ENTERPRISES (Publishing Diu.) 6620 Diversey Avenue Chicago 35, Illinois Copyright by George Peter Jensen 195 3 Pen Sketches by Richard Evensen 977,31 &«« Dedicated to the men and women who laid the groundwork for the greatest city in the world, and to the spirit of "I Witt" that permeates its citizens of today in their struggle for a greater metropolis. FOREWORD I expect neither fame nor fortune from the publication of this took; it is written as a public service to acquaint people of Chicago with the dramatic birth of their city. There is no other city in the world that has had so tragic a beginning, nor one that has risen to such fabulous heights in size, in beauty, and in commercial and industrial importance, in so short a time that it can be called a man's lifetime. We citizens of Chicago have every reason to be proud of our city I-* and we are *— but many of us know very little of its history or of its struggle to become what it is today. It was to gain knowledge for myself in that respect and for entertain- ment and education for others that I prepared a lecture, to be accompanied by colored slides and moving pictures, of Chicago, past and present. In doing this, I became enthralled with the city's early history. I found that the Chicago His- torical Society and the City Council had marked some sixty historical places and buildings with bronze plaques. To visit these old sites was as fascinating as to see my own childhood environments, and I felt certain that a description of them would make interesting reading. This book is the result. Some of the markers may have disappeared, especially in the Loop, where buildings have been razed. However, these instances are but few, and the reader will get a thrill by stop- ping at the informative markers wherever they may be found. George Peter Jensen Chicago, Illinois 1953 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chicago Portage »— 1673 3 Marquette's Cabin *- 1674 9 Mission of the Guardian Angel >— 1696 13 Cabin of Du Saible *- Le Mai or Lalime ^ Kinzie *— 1778 17 Ouilmette Cabin ~ 1790 25 "One Piece of Land Six Miles Square at tbe Moutb of the Chicago River" ~ 1795 29 Fort Dearborn •— 1803 33 Jean Baptiste Beaubien Cabin — 1804 41 Burns House >— 1804 45 Lee's Place 49 Chief Robinson Cemetery 55 Indian Boundary Line ■— ■ 1816 59 The Massacre ~ 1812 63 Second Fort Dearborn *-> 1816 71 Cobweb Castle ~ 1819 79 Wolf Point - 1826 81 Green Tree Tavern >— 1833 87 Sauganash Tavern — 1827 91 Laughton's Ford ~ 1828 95 Billy Caldwell's House - 1828 99 Shabbona Grove 1829 103 First Post Office - 1832 109 First Catholic Church 113 First Presbyterian Church^-* 1833 119 First Baptist Church ~ 1833 123 Dearborn Street Drawbridge *— 1834 127 Old Treaty Elm - 1833 131 Stagecoach Office ~ 1834 135 Hubbard's Folly ~ 1835 139 United States Land Office ~ 1835 145 Saloon Building ~ 1836 153 First Mayor's House ~- 1836 159 Green Bay Road 163 David Kennison Grave 167 Rumsey School 173 First Wheat Cargo 177 First Cattle Market 181 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES MAP1E AV. GROVE AV. GOLF ROAD JOLIET AV HARLEM AV. OAK PARK AV RIDGELAND AUSTIN AV. CENTRAL AV. LARAMIE AV CICERO AV. KOSTNER AV. PULASKI RD. CENTRAL PK. KEDZIE AV CALIFORNIAAYl WESTERN AV DAMEN AV. ASHLAND AV. RACINE AV. HALSTEO ST. CANAL ST. STATE ST. SOUTH PARK COTTAGE GROVE The Chicago Portage i— 1673 CHICAGO PORTAGE ~ 1673 HARLEM AVENUE AT FORTY-NINTH STREET (Marker near hank of Portage Creek) AT HARLEM AVENUE AND FORTY-NINTH STREET THERE IS A stone wall on which may he read: Chicago Portage *-* 1673. A few hundred feet west of the wall, a visitor will find a boulder, placed there by the Chicago Historical Society, to commemorate the arrival of two of the earliest travelers known to have crossed what was to become one of the most useful portages in the Northwest. The boulder when placed had a bronze plaque on which was inscribed: "This marks the west end of the carrying or connecting place uniting the waters of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes with those of the Mississippi River, its tributaries and the Gulf of Mexico. The earliest factor in de- termining Chicago's commercial supremacy. An artery of travel used by the Aborigines in their migrations and later by Joliet, Marquette, La Salle, Tonti and the fur traders of New France. An early strategical point, in the wars incident to the winning of the Northwest for the settlers and discovered by Joliet and Marquette in 1673." In front of the marker is a well-kept lawn, terraced and otherwise beautified, and a parking space for the use of those who come to linger for a while by a shrine to the past. Behind the boulder is Portage Creek which, a short dis- tance southwest, flows into the Des Plaines. Marquette and Joliet came up the Des Plaines in canoes. To the east is the area of the portage, for a time called Mud Lake, extending to HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES Kedzie Avenue and spreading north and south from Ogden Avenue to Archer Avenue. Portage Creek today looks almost as it did in 1673, but the area of Mud Lake is now dry and laid out with paved streets in the suburbs of Lyons, Riverside, Summit, Berwyn and Cicero, and in the townships of Stickney, Hawthorne and Lawndale in Chicago. La Salle and Joliet landed here after a journey of more than twenty-five hundred miles through primitive forest and on rivers which had been traveled by few white persons, and here they commenced a portage to the Chicago River, blazing a trail that led to the building of one of the greatest cities in the world. Jacques Marquette, born in Laon, France, in 1637, early entered the priesthood, and in the service of the church devoted all his energy and talent until his death in 1675. In 1666 he was sent to Canada to establish missions among the Indians, and in 1673 he came to what is now known as Chicago. Louis Joliet was born in Quebec in 1645. He was educated in a college of that city, for the priesthood, but found mathe- matics and geography more interesting and decided to enter a life that was more in keeping with his inclinations. He en- gaged in the fur business, traveling in the wilderness, and eventually held various positions of trust with the Canadian government in connection with the fur trade and as an explorer. Joliet joined Marquette at Mackinac in 1673 to start the long journey which brought them to the Chicago Portage #— Mar- quette sent by his church to win converts among the Indians and to establish missions, Joliet sent by the French govern- 4 CHICAGO PORTAGE ~ 1673 ment in Canada to explore the Mississippi and to locate its outlet. They took with them five men. In canoes, the party followed the shores of Lake Michigan to Green Bay, through which they reached Fox River and Lake Winnebago, portaged repeatedly, and eventually reached the Wisconsin. Here they set their canoes on the river at what is now Port- age, floated to its junction with the Mississippi, and down the Mississippi to the Arkansas. At this place they were told by friendly Indians that to go farther would be extremely dangerous. As their mission had been fulfilled in part i— Marquette had gained many converts, everywhere making friends among the natives, and Joliet had made his surveys and notes >— they decided to turn about and start for home. Being told of a shorter route to Lake Michigan, by way of the Illinois River, the Des Plaines and the Chicago, with but a short portage between the two last, they left the Mississippi when the Illinois was reached. For several days they stayed at an Illinois Indian village called Kaskaskia, near the present village of Utica, and here Marquette was so successful in his mission and so beloved by the natives that they begged him to return to them as soon as possible. Wrth a number of Kas- kaskians, who insisted on accompanying them as guards and guides, the party ascended the Des Plaines and entered the little creek to the beginning of the portage at present Har- lem Avenue *— and now the portage began. Dragging, pushing or paddling as best they could through shallow water and mud, they reached present Kedzie Avenue. Here they carried their canoes and equipment across a ridge, »— now cut through for the Drainage Canal *— set them down in the south branch of the Chicago River, and soon reached Lake Michigan. Now they parted from their HlSrOIUC CHICAGO SITES friendly guides and continued along the west shore of the lake to Green Bay, where Joliet left Marquette and pro- ceeded on to Montreal to make his report to the governor of Canada. Marquette's journal of the voyage has been preserved, hut Joliet lost all his records before he reached his destination. Verbally he gave his report, which included the following suggestion for a canal from the Lakes to the Gulf, . . . "if a channel were cut through this ridge (at Kedzie Avenue) one could sail from Lake Illinois to the Sea of Florida.*' Two hundred twenty-seven years later our Drainage Canal was opened to traffic, and now, indeed, great ships do ply between our city and the Gulf. From 1673 to 1700 the portage was used regularly by fur traders, missionaries and other white persons, as well as by natives, being considered the shortest and best route be- tween the Great Lakes and the Illinois country, where fur trade was ever on the increase, but at the beginning ei: the Eighteenth century it became extremely dangerous for a white person to travel in this area, due to Indian wars and to increasing hostility to the white people. For nearly a hundred years the portage, and the area that was to become Chicago, is shrouded in mystery, with little or no record of what took place. Doubtless there were white traders, explorers and nis- sionaries in the region, but none of them has left an enlif ht- ening account of his explorations. With the treaty of Greenville, 1795, there began a i.ew era, and the Chicago Portage again became a useful link in the route from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi. As will be seen on the accompanying map, a trail led from Fort Dearborn (at present Michigan Avenue and Wacker CHICAGO PORTAGE ~ 1673 Drive) along the south branch of the river ^ sometimes called Portage River ,— forking at Kedzie Avenue, one arm skirting Mud Lake a little north of present Archer Avenue, crossing the Des Plaines by Summit Ford at Summit, the other run- ning along the north shore of Mud Lake south of present Og- den Avenue, crossing the Des Plaines by Laughtons ford at Lyons. Once over the river the trails continued southwest to the Illinois River. Mud Lake was more or less like a slough, overgrown with reeds and other vegetation, but there were two islands in it >—> one at present Forty-seventh Street and Lockwood Avenue, the other at Forty- seventh Street and Ridgeland Avenue *- on which trees grew. Toward the north side of the lake there was a channel that usually was deep enough to float canoes and small boats. When spring rains and thaws flooded the Des Plaines ^ as they do to this day *-* then the water in Mud Lake not only reached Ogden and Archer Avenues, but also went over the ridge at Kedzie Avenue, making one great lake of the entire area from the ridge to Harlem Avenue. In 1674, when Marquette returned and built a cabin at what is now Damen Avenue and the South Branch, such a flood swept over his camp, and in 1849, bridges in the young city of Chicago were swept from their foundations by another. As early as 1810 a movement was started for the digging of a canal to make possible travel by water to the Des Plaines without portage, and several attempts were made during the years following to get the project under way. It was not until 1836, however, that it at last was begun, and in 1848 it was completed and opened, with ceremonies at Canalport ^ Ash- land Avenue and the South Branch. This canal »-* Illinois and Michigan »— is still flowing HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES through the area of former Mud Lake, and by it there was partial drainage. In 1870 William B. Ogden, Chicago's first mayor, and John Wentworth, also one time mayor of Chicago, purchased part of the land of Mud Lake and dug a ditch, expecting thereby to drain the lake. The venture proved disastrous in that instead of draining the lake it made the flow of water greater from the Des Plaines, with the result that mud was washed into the south branch of the river, and from there pumped into the canal to such an extent that it interfered with navigation; furthermore, the water washed sewage into Lake Michigan, polluting the water. Eventually a dam was built at the outlet of the Ogden- Wentworth ditch at Portage Creek, and the ditch was abandoned. Not until the Sanitary District Canal was opened, in 1900, with a complete reversal of the Chicago River current, was the area of Mud Lake com- pletely drained. The swampy land has disappeared, and sub- division and building of homes and factories has taken place. Mud Lake belongs to history, and so do Marquette, Joliet, the fur traders and the Indians who traveled the old portage on which now stands the great plant of the International Harvester Company at its eastern end, with the thriving sub- urbs of Lyons and Summit at its western end. Between are great factories in Stickney and fine homes in Lyons, Berwyn, Riverside and Cicero. Just about over the former channel of old Mud Lake 1 is Hawthorne race track, where thousands of Chicagoans gather to see the races, never dreaming that they are on one of the historic spots of the Northwest. 1. For an excellent description of Mud Lake and the Portage see The Location of the Chicago Portage Route of the Seventeenth Century by Robert Knight, M.W.S.E., and Lucius H. ZeucK, M.D. (Evanston, Illinois: Mumm Print SKop. 1928). MARQUETTE'S CABIN - 1674 DAMEN AVENUE AND THE SOUTH BRANCH AT THE NORTH END OF THE DAMEN AVENUE BRIDGE stands a monument to Marquette on or near the spot on which he spent the winter of 1674-75. The memorial is a bronze plaque on stone and shows Marquette and an Indian chief. Marquette had promised the Illinois Indians at Kaskaskia that he would return to them, and on the 25th of October, 1674, with two French companions, Pierre and Jacques, he left Green Bay to fulfill his promise, going by way of the west shore of Lake Michigan and the Chicago Portage. In his journal, he describes the hardships of the journey, which was sometimes on land and sometimes on the rough lake, and he mentions places that have been identified by historians with HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES present day names i— Milwaukee, Racine, Lake Bluff, Root River, etc. On December 4th he and his two companions reached the mouth of the Chicago River, and going two leagues up this stream, they settled in a cabin ^ which should be in the vicinity of where the monument now stands. Here Marquette and his two companions spent the winter in hardships and distress, Marquette suffered with dysentery, from which he died a few months later as he was returning from the Kas- kaskia village. Their cabin was built on a hill, but even this higher loca- tion was inundated by a flood, forcing them to climb trees to avoid drowning. In his journal, Marquette writes that two other Frenchmen were there at the time, and that they and some Indians provided food and helped him and his com- panions in the hardships that were suffered. Throughout the winter Marquette was very sick, but he was determined to carry on his missionary work and to reach the village of Kas- kaskia as soon as the spring thaws would permit. He held Mass for the Indians who came to his cabin, and made many converts, but as soon as the rivers were open he started out with Pierre and Jacques for the Illinois River. Over the portage that he and Joliet had gone the year before, they dragged their canoe. Setting it on Portage Creek, they floated and paddled on the Des Plaines and the Illinois to Kaskaskia. Here Marquette was received "like an angel from heaven" and remained with his Indian friends as long as he could; but, feeling that his strength was leaving him, and wanting to get back to his mission at Mackinac before he died, he called his flock together, "five hundred chiefs and old men 10 MARQUETTE'S CABIN ~ 1674 and fifteen hundred youths, besides a crowd of women and children,'' to preach to them his last sermon. His sands of life were nearly run out, and he knew that he had to leave at once if he were to reach his mission before he died. About a hundred natives accompanied him and his two companions as far as Lake Michigan, contending with one another for the privilege of carrying his baggage. It is generally believed that he did not pass his cabin at present Damen Avenue and the South Branch, going instead over a portage from about present Lockport to the Calumet River, thereon reaching the lake, or by way of Kankakee River, with portage to the St. Joseph River, and so to the Lake. Reaching a point near present Ludington, Michigan, Mar- quette's death drew near, and his two companions carried him to the shore and hastily built a cabin. The holy Father died, first asking pardon of his two friends for any trouble he had caused them and promising them that they would be re- membered in Heaven. His two grief-stricken companions buried him on the lake shore, near the mouth of the river that bears his name today, and erected a wooden cross on his grave. The following year, 1676, a party of his Indian friends op- ened the grave, and carefully placing the bones of Marquette in a box of birchbark, conveyed them to the mission of St. Ignace at Mackinac, where they were buried with solemn ceremonies beneath the floor of the chapel. In 1877 an old foundation was discovered where this chapel is supposed to have stood; and in it were found a piece of birchbark as from a canoe, some wrought iron nails, a hinge and some fragments of bone. These were found in what appeared to have been a vault and are supposed to be the last remains of Father Marquette and of his coffin. 11 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES In 1907 a fifteen- foot wooden cross was erected on the tank of the south branch of the Chicago River at Robey Street (now Damen) to commemorate the historic spot where Marquette's cabin had stood. This cross was eventually de- stroyed, but it was replaced by another, on which is inscribed: "In memory of Marquette and Joliet, 1675.'' Some time be- fore the bridge was built a dredge brought up from the river bottom a three-foot iron cross, French in design, which is sup- posed to have been used by Marquette, and this cross, too, was placed on the riverbank, but when the bridge was built, in 1930, the crosses were removed. The large wooden cross was hung on a factory wall below the bridge approach, where it still hangs, weather-beaten and worn. The iron cross has disappeared. Today the splendid bridge marks the skill of modern en- gineers and artisans, and between its raised spans great ships carry on to the Gulf, with products from enormous factories around it; but there are still primitive appearing spots near that draw thought to the past and to the cabin of Marquette. 12 MISSION OF THE GUARDIAN ANGEL ~ 1696 ON THE NORTH RAILING OF THE BRIDGE OVER THE SANITARY channel at Foster Avenue is a plaque on which a passer-by may read that near that spot stood, in 1696, the cabin of Father Pinet, founder of the Mission of the Guardian Angel. It is certain that such a mission existed in what is now the city of Chicago, tut, as is often the case, historians cannot, from scant sources with indefinite markings, determine the exact location. In this case some historians believe that the mission was at Foster and the channel; others that it was at Waclcer Drive and La Salle Street >— now occupied by the Builders Building; another that it was at a place a few miles up the South Branch; another that it was on the Calumet River; and still another that it was in the Skolrie Valley, west of Evanston. Sources of information are letters and journals by missionaries and others *-* mainly the journal of Father St. Cosme, who visited Father Pinet at the mission. 1 Be the exact location as it may, Father Pinet had a mission; and at present Foster Avenue and the channel, or near it, there was at one time a sizeable Indian village •— ascertained by discovery of various articles in the ground about the place. Father St. Cosme mentions a village of 150 cabins adjoining Father Pinet' s cabin, and says further that "one league on the river there is another almost as large.'' Father Pinet minis- tered in these, no doubt, as he did in others in northern and 1. Cavalier. St. Cosme, Le Sueur, Gravier, and Guignas, witK an introduction, notes and an index by John Gilmary Shea, Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi, (Albany: printed by Joel Munsell, 1861). 13 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES central Illinois, traveling back and forth as Chicago's first commuter. Through intrigue and misunderstanding he was forced to leave, and died in the mission of the Tamaroas, south of pres- ent St. Louis, in 1704. Unfortunately, Father Pinet has left no records of his work, and not much more is known about the Mission of the Guardian Angel than about its exact location. In fact, the scant mention of it in history is the last chapter for nearly a century affecting Chicago. Between the time of Marquette's sojourn here and that of Pinet there were several historic persons who came through what later became Chicago >— La Salle, Tonti, Hennepin, AI- Iouez, St. Cosme, and others. 2 But there are no spots that can be designated definitely as their places of habitation while here. After 1700, the Indians were in constant warfare to drive settlers from the Mississippi Valley, and only a few white persons took the risk of being away from the protecting pali- sade of a fort or from a strong settlement. The few who did come to these parts have left little or no record of their experi- ences. From the writings of contemporary missionaries we learn that Father Pinet was of the Ioveable character that marked Marquette, and was equally sacrificing in his labor to spread Christian religion among his red fellow men. While he was here the Miamis were coming through on their trek from the west, settling over a period of years in north- 2. Francis Parlcman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, (Boston: Little Brown, 1896). And John Gilmary Skea, Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, with the original narratives of Marquette, AHouez, Mambre, Hennepin, and Anastase Douay, (Albany: Printed by Joseph McDonough, 1903). 14 MISSION OF THE GUARDIAN ANGEL - 1696 em Illinois. They were a fierce and warlike trite, but Pinet seems to have gotten along well with them. They had a great village in present Bowmanville, between Foster and Peterson Avenues, and there were villages at Forest Glen, at Niles, and Skokie, evidenced by quantities of Indian relics that have been discovered in these sections by farmers and excavators, particularly in the Bowmanville section. Today fast motorboats scurry up the channel where the Indian village and the cabin of Pinet stood, and faster auto- mobiles speed over the former trails that linked one village with another, but when one stops on the bridge and looks toward the northwest it is not so difficult to imagine the tepees, the totem pole, the war post, the Indian dance, the war paint and the feathers in an Indian village ^-> but it does seem a little difficult to see a holy Father with cassock and rosary in the picture. Nevertheless, Father Pinet was here; and his labor was part of that which has made Chicago a great city. 15 CABIN OFDU SAIBLE ~ LE MAI OR LA LIME ~ KINZIE - 1778 EAST OF MICHIGAN AVENUE AT NORTH END OF BRIDGE (Marker on parking lot at the river) THIS IS THE DU SAIBLE CABIN AFTER KINZIE REMODELED IT. The buildings back of it and to the right are probably barns. A spot a little south of the Tribune Tower is marked by a plaque, on which one may read: "Near this site stood the Kinzie Mansion, 1784-1832, home of Pointe Du Saible, Le May, and John Kinzie, Chicago's first civilian. Here was born in 1805 the city's first white child, Ellen Marion Kinzie." Again historians seem to disagree. It may have been Le Mai or La Lime who sold the cabin to Kinzie ; Ellen Marion may or may not have been the first white child born in this 17 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES area; Du Saible may have been a Negro from Haiti, or he may have been the son of a well-to-do Detroiter. The fact that is most important is that here stood a house from 1778 i-< or thereabout <—> to 1832 >— or thereabout »-* which together with Fort Dearborn has as dramatic a history as any that can be found anywhere and a history that is also that of the birth of a great city. The cabin stood across the river from the Fort, facing the river. One could look from its front windows directly along the stream which then made a bend and ran several hundred feet south, where Michigan Avenue is now. Du Saible was a Negro, or Mulatto, and lived in the cabin from about 1778 until about 1800. He had an Indian wife and several children, and has been described as being of fine physique, well-educated, and an all-around good fellow who drank heavily. The only available picture of his cabin shows it as a small, straw-thatched hut, with no other buildings near it; but he is said to have maintained a trading post and done some farm- ing. It is not known why he discontinued, but some time around 1800, he sold his cabin to one LeMay or Lalime. 1 In 1803 LeMai >— or Lalime —* sold the building to John Kinzie, who was to occupy it until he died, four years before it disappears from the records. The lives of John Kinzie and members of his family were filled with drama. John, who may well be called the "father of Chicago," was born in Quebec in December, 1763. He had a good home, but his adventurous nature made him run 1. Mrs. John H. Kinzie, wKo got her information from her mother-in-law, Mrs. John Kinzie, says in ker charming book Wou Bun, that it was sold to Le Mai. Others have said it was Lalime . . . perhaps the names were of one and the same person. 18 CABIN OF DU SA1BLE ~LEMMOR LAUME ~ K1NZIE ~ 1778 away from it when he was a young lad. Eventually, he re- turned to Quebec and learned silversmithing, but again the wilderness called him, and he became a fur trader. His success as a trader with the Indians was phenomenal. He learned Indian languages and spoke them fluently; he re- spected Indian customs; he never took advantage of the In- dians' ignorance in trading, and personal friendship with powerful chiefs stood him in good stead when danger threat- ened him. About 1 785 he married Margaret McKinzie, who had lived for ten years a captive of Indians. In 1775, when Margaret was ten years old, a party of Shawnees raided a settlement in Giles County, Virginia, carrying off Margaret and her sister Elizabeth, two years younger. Their mother and all members except the father, who was not at the settlement, were mas- sacred. The prisoners were carried to a Shawnee village near Chillicothe, Ohio, and the two girls remained with the In- dians for a period of ten years, during which time they were well treated by their captors and adopted into the tribe. There are two stories of their eventual rescue. One is that John Kinzie and a Mr. Clark took the girls from the Indian village, after paying ransoms for them, and then to Detroit, where John set up housekeeping with Margaret, and Clark with Elizabeth. The other story is that a chief of the tribe took the girls to Detroit, where they met and married the two men. Be that as it may, three children were born to Margaret by her union with John, and two to Elizabeth by hers with Clark. The father of the girls, Mr. McKinzie, found out that his daughters were alive in Detroit, and went there to visit them. When he left for home, the two women returned with 19 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES him to Virginia, taking with them all the children. It is not known whether permanent separations were intended, but neither one of the young women returned to Detroit, and both married other men in Virginia. Margaret never saw John again, but their children came to Chicago to live, as did also a son of Elizabeth and Clark. In Virginia, Elizabeth married a Jonas Clybourn, and Mar- garet married a Mr. Hall. Children of these unions also be- came settlers in Chicago, as did Elizabeth and Jonas. The Clybourns, the Clarks and the Halls, as the Kinzies, did much to develop a frontier settlement, and lived to see it a big city. A few years after Margarets leaving John, he married Eleanor Lytle McKillip, who also had been a captive of In- dians in her childhood. In 1775, when she was nine years old, a party of Senecas made a raid on the Lytle home near Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania, and carried away Mrs. Lytle and three of her five children >— Eleanor, a two-year-younger brother, and an infant in arms. The infant was brutally killed, but the others were taken to a Seneca village. Here they were held captive until Mr. Lytle, the husband and father, with the help of the commandant of Fort Pitt, arranged to pay ransom. This was readily accepted for Mrs. Lytle and for the boy, but no sum could induce the chief >— said to be no other than the celebrated Cornplanter *— to part with the little girl, who was to take the place of the chiefs son, recently killed. She had been adopted into the tribe as a daughter of the chief. For four years she was treated with affection by her foster- father and with respect by the tribe as a whole. She had al- most forgotten her real parents, who had continued their ef- forts to effect her release, when they at last were able to pre- 20 CABIN OF DU SA1BLE ~ LE MAI OR LALIME ~ KINZIE ~ 1778 vail upon the chief to relinquish the girl, now thirteen years old. Some years after her release she was married to Captain McKillip of the British army, who was killed in 1 794 at Fort Defiance. By her union with the captain she gave birth to a daughter, Margaret, who as Mrs. Helm was to live through the bloodbath of Fort Dearborn. John Kinzie was married to Mrs. McKillip in the year of 1800. He had probably already established an agency at what was later to become Chicago, and in 1804 he took his wife and their first-born, John Harris, to the little cabin on the river Chicago, around which one of the great tragedies in the Northwest was to be enacted. In that cabin were born the three other Kinzie children —< Ellen Marion in 1805, Marie Indiana in 1807, and Robert Allen in 1810 «— who with their brother, John Harris, were to witness the cruel aftermath of the massacre. In 1811 John Kinzie became involved in a quarrel with La Lime. There had been bad blood between the two men for some time, and one day their ill will flared to the extent that La Lime attacked John with a knife, wounding him severely, and John plunged what is said to have been the same knife into La Lime's body, killing him. John ran to his boat and crossed the river to his cabin, and quickly having his wound dressed by his wife, he fled to the woods. Here he re- mained several days; then, learning that he had been exon- erated, he returned to his home. In the meantime the body of La Lime had been buried near the Kinzie home »— « and John is said to have tended the grave until he died. Bones and parts of a coffin were discovered in 1891 at Wabash Avenue and Illinois Street, which are believed to be 21 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES the remains or La Lime ana his coffin, and they are to be seen today in the Chicago Historical Society's building at Clark Street and North Avenue. One cannot even attempt to tell in this short sketch the dramatic and human interest stories connected with the Du Saible-Kinzie cabin. Here was Sha-ne-aw-kee <— » a name meaning 'Silversmith/' given to John Kinzie by the Indians >— making silver trinkets for trade with, or as gifts to the In- dians who came to his trading post assured of friendship and fairness in dealing with them. No one in need was ever turned away empty-handed. Here were marriages, births, and deaths. Music from John's fiddle was here, music to which the natives listened enthralled, and to which the soldiers from the Fort and the women of the settlement danced. Here were danger and tragedy, love and hate, happiness and sor- row, hardship, and ease, from 1804 to 1832. After the massacre to be told about later, the Kinzies left the cabin, and it was used by various persons until 1816, when the Kinzie family returned to it. Even before the mas- sacre, John had started improvements which were continued upon his return. After these additions were built, the cabin was called "The Mansion.'' It had then become a long, low building with a piazza extending along its front. In the house there were five rooms, and between it and the river there was a wide lawn shaded by a row of Lombardy poplars. Two immense cottonwood trees stood back of the house, and a well-cultivated garden extended northward, surrounded by various buildings, such as bakery, dairy, Iodginghouses for employees, and stables for livestock. To the east, between the river and the lake, there was a range of sand hills for a distance of about thirty rods. 22 CABIN OF DU SAIBLE - LE MAI OR LALIME - K1NZIE ~ 1778 The cabin had in fact become a mansion as measured by standards of a frontier; it continued for many years to be the best house in the settlement, and its owner the wealthiest man. However, the war of 1812 and the changed conditions in the years following the Kinzies' return to their home caused losses that could not be avoided, and John Kinzie died without much wealth. The house gradually deteriorated, and in 1827 John and his wife left it as untenable and went to live elsewhere im- probably in the home of Col. Beaubien. The following year John Kinzie closed his eventful life. He was visiting in the home of his daughter, Ellen Marion, in or near the Fort. Here he suffered a stroke, and in the arms of his daughter and of his friend, Gurdon S. Hubbard, he ex- pired. He was buried in the Fort Cemetery, but later his remains were removed to a cemetery at Clark Street and Chicago Avenue. Again later they were interred in what is now Lincoln Park ^ part of which was then a cemetery >-* and once more they were transferred, this time to Graceland Cemetery, where they now rest in the Kinzie lot. "The Mansion" >— the cabin of DuSaible, Le Mai or La Lime, and Kinzie >—> soon fell into decay. After the Kinzies left it, it was used as a store for a while and was occupied by a Mr. Bailey who functioned as postmaster. In 1832 it was still in use by one Mark Noble, who, being a devout Christian, probably held in the old house the first prayer meeting in Chicago. After that it seems to have disappeared from the records. One writer says that he used the house as a stable. Another historian says that Indians and immigrants used the timber of the house for firewood. Thus was the end of the first permanent building on the site of Chicago. It stood alone 23 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES near where now the great Tribune Tower is surrounded by other similar tokens of a century's progress. 24 OUILMETTE CABIN ~ 1790 NORTH BANK OF THE RIVER, WEST OF MICHIGAN AVENUE in blanchard's The Northwest and Chicago can be seen the reproduction of a letter in tine penmanship, but lacking somewhat in good grammar and spelling, as follows : Racine June 11th, 1839. Mr. John Kinzie, I cairn into Chicago in the year 1790 in July witness old Mr. Veaux and Mr. Griano. These men were living in the country Before the war with the winnebagoes. Trading with them I saw the Indians Brake open the Door of my house and also the Door of Mr. Kinzie's House. At first there was only three Indians come. They told me there was forty more coming and they told me to run. i Did So. In nine days all i found left of my things was the feathers of my Led scattered about the floor, the amount Destroyed By them at that time was about Eight hundred Dollars. Besides your father and me Had about four hundred hogs Destroyed by the Saim indians at the Saim time, further particulars when I see you. I wish you to write me whether it is best for me to come there or for you to come hear and how son it must be Done. Yours with Respect, antoine his x mark ouilmette JAS. MOORE The letter was apparently written to John H. Kinzie, a son of John Kinzie who died in 1828 >-* and probably by Jas. Moore for Ouilmette. No record of Antoine Ouilmettes whereabouts previous to his coming here seems to be available, nor of his activity during the first years after his arrival *— which, according to his Iet- 25 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES ter, was in 1790 ^-> but it is related that in 1803 he had a cabin on the north bank of the river a few hundred feet west of the Kinzie cabin »— probably on the ground now occupied by the Wrigley Building -* being one of four cabins which then were the only buildings on the site of Chicago. In it he lived with his Potawatomi wife and their several children. After the massacre, in 1812, he is said to have lived in the Kinzie house while the Kinzies were absent, probably because the Kinzie house was more commodious, and it is also said that he was the only white person here in 1814. After the battle, Mrs. Helm sought refuge in the Ouilmette cabin and was hidden there by members of the Ouilmette family to escape from a band of Indians who had come too late to take part in the general massacre. Black Bird, leader of the Indians around the Fort, had sent runners out to advise of the impending attack on the garrison, and Indians from the more distant villages arrived after the battle had taken place. Disappointed in not having partici- pated in the slaughter, some of these sought satisfaction in pillage and in the perpetration of any bloody work on a white person that opportunity might give. Some of these late arrivals approached the Kinzie house, and Black Partridge, another Potawatomi chief, who had sworn to protect the Kinzies, recognized them as being from the Wabash country and not too friendly towards the Kinzie family. Fearing for Mrs. Helm, a good-looking young woman who had already been wounded in battle, he hastily took her to the Ouilmette house, requesting the family to hide her. She was hidden under a feather bed on which the sister of Mrs. Ouilmette sat calmly sorting patchwork when the Indians reached the cabin after being driven away from the Kinzie 26 OUILMETTE CABIN ~ 1790 house. It was a hot day and Mrs. Helm almost suffocated under her covering, tut the redskins left without finding her. One other found refuge in the Ouilmette house *- » Sergeant William Griffith, later captain of General Harrison's spies. Just before the evacuation of the Fort started, it was discovered that some of the horses had strayed away, and Griffith was sent in search of them. His search, however, was unavailing. Returning alone, near the Fort, he was taken prisoner by To-pee-nee-bee, a friendly Indian chief; but his capture was but a ruse to save him. The chief took his weapons from him and paddled him across the river, telling him to hide in the woods. This the sergeant did, but the following day >— after the battle »— » he stole cautiously to the Ouilmette house for food, certain of being helped by the Frenchman. This was just after the Wabash Indians had left the house, and his danger was imminent. The family stripped him of his uni- form and dressed him in a suit of deerskin, with belt, moccasins, and pipe, like a French engage, and all were told to address him in French. Although he could not understand a word of it, he continued to pass for a Frenchman and was not molested by the redskins. The above story seems a little queer, but it was told by one who was there at the time. How Ouilmette fared during the massacre is not related, but since he was a Frenchman, had an Indian wife and was not one of the hated Americans, he, no doubt, was quite safe and took no part in the battle. Wrien soldiers returned in 1816 to build the second Fort, Ouilmette cultivated the Fort garden for them. He did some farming for himself, had some sheep, transported goods over the portage, and worked for John Kenzie. In 1825 he was taxed four dollars on property valuation of $400 and in 1833 27 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES he joined with others in a petition to have established the first Catholic church in Chicago. At the Treaty of Prairie du Chien, 1829, one provision was that "To Archange Ouilmette, a Potawatami woman, wife of Antoine, two sections to herself and her children on Lake Michigan, south of and adjoining the northern boundary of the section herein made by the Indians aforesaid to the United States." . . . "The tracts of land herein stipulated to be granted shall never be leased or conveyed by the gran- tees, or their heirs, to any person whatever without the per- mission of the President of the United States." On these two sections, where now stand the village of Wil- mette and part of the city of Evanston, Antoine Ouilmette and some members of his family lived in a house of logs situated on a high bluff a little north of present Lake Avenue, and Ouilmette was there as late as 1838. He was then a very old man, bowed with age, dark-skinned, ambling along with a sack over his shoulder. Children were afraid of him, and mothers would say to their misbehaving youngsters: "Ouil- mette will take you into his bag if you don't behave." Of the final disposition of the Ouilmette cabin on the river bank near present Michigan Avenue, there is no record. Per- haps under the magnificent Wrigley Building there are still some of its old logs. 28 31 ST. STREET "ONE PIECE OF LAND, SIX MILES SQUARE AT THE MOUTH OF THE CHICAGO RIVER" ~ 1795 FROM FULLERTON AVENUE TO THIRTY-FIRST STREET AND FROM THE LAKE TO CICERO AVENUE FEW OF THE THOUSANDS WHO LIVE IN THE AREA DESIGNATED above know that this is the first known real-estate transaction here and that without this event Chicago might not have be- come the great city that it is. Constant hostility of the Indians after the American Revo- lution, with raids on settlements in the Northwest, made it imperative that protective measures be taken by the young 29 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES United States; and "Mad Anthony" Wayne was given the jot of teaching the redskins a lesson. After several battles in 1793-94 he engaged a large force of many tribes at Fallen Timbers, near present Waynesville, Ohio, and beat them so thoroughly that they were willing to sign a treaty whereby they ceded to the United States more than half of what is now the state of Ohio and a good part of Indiana, and in addition sixteen small pieces of land, scat- tered through the northwest, on which the United States wanted to build forts as military outposts. One of these was 'V- * six miles square at the mouth of the Chicago River ^" This treaty, known as the Greenville Treaty, was signed with the marks of several of the Potawatomi chiefs who had fought at Fallen Timbers against the Americans but who later were identified with the development of the settlement, town and city of Chicago. The "six miles square" now holds the Loop with its sky- scrapers and a million workers, part of Lincoln Park, and all of Humboldt, Garfield and Douglas Parks. It has thirty-six square miles of industrial, commercial and residential build- ings and yet comprises only a small part of the area of the present city. In 1 795 much of the thirty-six square miles was but slough, with a sluggish river running through it. In what is now the Loop, there were several small creeks running from the south into the river at present State and La Salle Streets, and at Franklin Street from the north. At Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue there was rising, dry ground, around which the main river made a bend, running south and empty- ing into the lake at what is now Madison Street. Here again, historians disagree. Robert Knight and Lucius 30 "ONE PIECE OF LAND, SIX MILES SQUARE" ~ 1795 H. Zeuch in their The Location of the Chicago Portage Route of the Seventeenth Century present seeming evidence that the outlet was between Lake and Randolph Streets, but eyewit- nesses have said it was at Madison Street. The truth probably is that the sand shifted through action of wind and wave, closing the old mouth and making a new one. At the mouth was a sandbar which sometimes had so little water over it that a person could walk across. North of the main river there was heavy timber between the lake and the North Branch, and along the South Branch there were trees, here and there in groves. But beyond that there was endless prairie, broken only by Mud Lake and the north and south branches of the river with their small tributaries. To the south, along Lake Michigan, there were dunes, such as are still seen beyond Gary, Indiana, with shrubs and occa- sional small trees. In 1833 a channel was cut through the sandbar, straight- ening the river, and the old mouth of the river was closed. Gradually the tongue of land was washed away and new land was formed ; thus all the land now from a short distance east of Michigan Avenue and to the present lake shore is filled-in and added ground. The street level of the Loop, as well as that in other parts of the "six mile square" area, has been raised several feet by fill-in; many of us still remember walking up and down steps on sidewalks from the old to the new levels. The river has been widened and straightened; canals have been built; stone quarries and clay pits have appeared and disappeared on the former prairie and slough land; but it is still " >— one piece of land six miles square at the mouth of the Chicago River •— " which is part of the site of our wonder city, without 31 HISTORIC CHICAGO STTES the acquisition of which at that time there might now he no such city. 32 FORT DEARBORN ~ 1803 SOUTHWEST CORNER OF MICHIGAN AVENUE AND WACKER DRIVE (Marker on corner and inside London Guarantee Building) THE RIVER HERE HAS MADE THE BEND AND IS FLOWING SOUTH to the outlet at present Madison Street. Driving or walking north on Michigan Avenue from Ran- dolph Street, one fends rising ground to Wacker Drive, at the top of which today stands the tall London Guarantee Building. It is difficult to visualize that only a little more than a hundred years ago there stood on that spot only a stockade and some log buildings >—> Fort Dearborn. The Fort was built in 1803 by soldiers sent from Detroit in command of Captain John Whistler. They cut timber on the shore of Lake Michigan, north of the river, and floated it on 33 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES the lake and up the river to the bend. Here the Fort was built, the southwest corner being about where the northeast corner of the London Guarantee Building now has a plaque commemorating the location. The Fort, therefore, extended north where now the widened river flows, and east across present Michigan Avenue. Thus, driving north today on that street, one passes directly over the Fort site when crossing the Michigan Avenue bridge. The Fort had a double palisade *— tree trunks driven into the ground i—» leaving a runway which was commanded by gun towers at the northwest and southeast corners of the en- closure. Inside the palisade were a parade ground, barracks for the soldiers and separate quarters for the officers. On the north side was a tunnel to the river, probably for access to water during a possible siege, and between it and the north- west corner blockhouse was a powder magazine of brick or stone •— the only building of the Fort to withstand fire after the massacre. Within the palisades were also shops, bakery, barns, etc., and close outside were other outhouses. The main gate to the Fort was on the south side, probably in present Michigan Avenue several feet south of Waker Drive. A little southwest of the Fort, probably at Wabash near the river, was a house of heavy logs, with portholes for gun fire, used by the United States agent as factory or sutler house. Directly east of that i— Wabash Avenue and Wacker Drive *— was the Fort garden, and adjoining it a cultivated held. At Lake Street and Wabash Avenue was the Fort Cemetery, in which old John Kinzie was first laid to rest. The road leading from the Fort exit gate went south on present Michigan Avenue to the fatal spot of the massacre i—> to be described in a later chapter. 34 FORT DEARBORN ~ 1803 In 1812 there were four other houses on the site of the pres- ent city, and several white persons must have settled here, but the scant history that has survived time and the great Chicago fire, in which valuable records were destroyed, leave little to say about them. The area was about as primitive as it could be, with Indians lurking about waiting for time and opportunity to take revenge for real or fancied wrongs done them. There were marriages, births and deaths within and without the Fort; there were quarrels and conflict among officers and men of the garrison and among civilians; there was work and sport, hunting in the timber and on the prairie, parties and festivities, with John Kinzie and a couple of fifers from the garrison furnishing the music. The Indians became more and more hostile as the war of 1812 between the United States and England loomed, and although several of the Potawatomi chiefs were friendly, the young braves looked for the opportunity to exterminate the "white devils, with their mouths wide open." After the Indian raid on Lee's Place on April 7th, at pres- ent Racine Avenue and the South Branch *— to be described later »— ■ the situation for the settlement became precarious. Indians were camped about the Fort to the number of sev- eral hundred, and were so arrogant and threatening that Cap- tain Heald, commander of the garrison, gave orders for everyone to stay within the Fort or in the factor* s house close by. On one occasion a chief shouted derisively to an inter- preter, "Soon white chief's wives will be hoeing in our corn- fields.'' On August 9th an order came from General Hull, who was in command of the army forces in this region, directing Captain 35 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES Heald to evacuate the Fort, distribute the stores to the Indians and take the garrison and civilians to Fort Wayne. Since so much blame for the unfortunate aftermath of the evacua- tion has been placed upon Heald, it is interesting to read the written order, discovered by Milo M. Quaife. 1 Sandwich, July 29th, 1812. Captain Nat. Heald. Sir: It is with regret I order the evacuation of your post, owing to the want of provision only a neglect of tKe commandant of (word illegible, possibly Detroit) . You will, therefore, destroy all arms and ammunition, but the goods of the factory you may give to the friendly Indians, who may be desirous of escorting you to Fort Wayne, and to the poor and needy of your Post. I am informed this day that Macinac and the Island of St. Joseph will be evacuated on acct. of scar- city of provisions and I hope in my next to give you an acct. of the surrender of the British at Maiden, as I expect 600 men here by the beginning of Sept. I am Sir Yours etc., BRIGADIER GEN. HULL Addressed: Captain Nathan Heald, Commander Fort Dearborn, by Express. On the 13th of August Captain Heald went outside the palisade to make terms with the Indians /—Mrs. John H. Kinzie in Wau Bun says that her father-in-law, John Kinzie, accom- panied him ^ while the soldiers within the Fort held their guns trained on the redskins. Captain Heald agreed to leave all stores with the Indians in exchange for safe passage to Fort Wayne. Whether he also promised the whiskey, ammunition 1. Milo M. Quaife, Chicago and the Old Northwest, (Chicago: University of Chicago PreM. 1913). 36 FORT DEARBORN ~ 1803 and arms is not clear, but it has been generally believed that be did. However, be destroyed all tbe guns and ammunition, ex- cepting what be needed for bis men on tbe marcb, and poured tbe wbiskey, including Jobn Kinzies, into tbe river. Precau- tions for secrecy bad been taken, but tbe Indians found out what bad taken place, and they were furious. Tbe determination and arrangements to evacuate caused conflict between Heald and some of his officers. 'Why no council of war *-- " . . . "Tbe Fort can be held until reinforce- ments arrives ." There were charges and counter- charges of fear and cowardice. But the die had been cast —* there was no alternative, with guns and ammunition gone. On tbe same day, Captain Wells arrived from Fort Wayne, with thirty Miami Indians. He was the uncle of Mrs. Heald, had been kidnapped by Indians when a child and bad grown to manhood among them, marrying a daughter of Little Turtle, a Miami chief. Having learned of the danger to bis niece and to the gar- rison, he had hurried to the rescue, but his presence probably only aggravated tbe hostility of tbe Potawatomis, who looked upon him as a deserter who had taken up arms against his foster brethren and was a captain in the American Army. At any rate, be did not effect a cancellation of the plan to massa- cre those whom be had come to rescue, but he did give up his life in trying ^ as will be told later. On tbe evening of the 14th, Black Partridge, a Potawatomi chief who played a heroic part in the massacre, went to Cap- tain Heald. Taking from around his neck a chain and medal given him by the government of tbe United States for friendly services, he handed it to the captain, saying that be could no 37 Hl&TOIUC CHICAGO SITES longer wear it because his people were bent upon killing bis wbite brethren. Tbe nigbt of tbe fourteenth came with gloom and appre- hension for the morrow, when the evacuation was to take place. The stage was set for one of the great dramas of the wilderness. After the massacre came further horrors. An eyewitness has said that shrieks could be heard throughout the night and on the following day while the wounded were being tortured. The details of this and of later suffering of survivors is too lengthy to tell here. 2 The day following the massacre the Fort was set on fire, and only the magazine stood intact among the charred logs of the old Fort. Thus the story of the first Fort Dearborn and its last day after the bloody finale. When one sees the beautiful sky line of our great metropolis, with its towering buildings in which a million workers toil for a yet greater city, it is difficult to visualize the old Fort and a few cabins as the only buildings here in the time of our grand- fathers. 2. Milo M. Quaife, Chicago and the Old Northwest, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1913). Or A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago (Chicago: Published ty A. T. Andreas; printed by R. R. Donnelly and Sons, 1884). 38 * ««* and became an Indian trader. He does not appear to have been around at the time of the massacre, but about 1804 he married Josette La Framboise, a servant of the Kinzies, and with her he established a permanent home in 1816 after the second Fort was built. In 1855, at the age of 77, he married for the third time. With his first wife he had two children, Medora and Charles; with his second, eleven, and with his third, four -* seventeen children in all. He died in Naperville, Illinois, at the age of 85. The cabin at Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue evi- dently soon became too small for a big family, and Jean either added to it or built another and larger house near it, in which he lived with his family, using the little cabin as a barn. The larger house is described by a contemporary as a low, gloomy building of five rooms for which Jean paid a thousand dollars 41 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES <—> a great sum of money at that time for a house. (One his- torian says there were only three rooms) . In 1823 he bought the United States factor's house, which was a little south of the Fort, paying five hundred dollars for it. The house at Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue eventually became a schoolhouse. Here in 1830 were one white and twenty-four half-breed pupils, ranging in ages from four to twenty years, being taught the three R's. There were two teachers, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Forbes, who lived in the building ,— Mr. Forbes having one room for the boys and Mrs. Forbes having another for the girls. The house was described as "a block or timber-built one, being of logs hewed on two sides, with two main rooms and an addition to one room, with the walls enlivened by a tap- estry of white cotton sheeting." 1 Only a few cabins were standing around Fort Dearborn in 1830, but there had been some attempt made at schooling be- fore Mr. and Mrs. Forbes took hold. The first "tuition" was in the winter of 1810-11, when Robert A. Forsyth, half brother of John Kinzie, then only thirteen years old, taught spelling to a few youngsters. His school was in the Fort, and his first pupil was John H. Kinzie, his nephew. In 1816 a William L. Cox had a school in one of the out- buildings back of the garden of the "Kinzie Mansion" ^ it must have been near present Michigan Avenue and Illinois Street; and Charles Beaubien, son of Jean, taught his num- erous brothers and sisters, and also children of his uncle Mark, in 1829. But to get back to the little cabin at Randolph Street and 1. Henry H. Hurlbut, Chicago Antiquities, (CKicago: Printed for tKe autkor by Fergus Printing Co., 1881.) 42 JEAN BAPTISTE BEAUBIEN CABIN ~ 1804 Michigan Avenue : Its final fate was pathetic. It was used as a warehouse and as a stable for a time. After that it stood roofless and took a beating from wind and waves until it was a wreck of leaning log walls. E. O. Gale in his Reminiscences of Old Chicago has a touching account of its end: "There was a small, dilapidated old building, built well inland many years ago, but now being no longer protected by the river bank, it tottered on the yearning brink, while every storm threatened to engulf it. There the poor dilapidated relic of the past stood trembling on yielding sand. Shorn of its usefulness, it mutely appealed to passersby, like some stranded human hulk whose younger days may have been prosperous and happy but who in the fierce battle of life has lost all its ground, awaiting the sands of oblivion to bury it forever." After the pre-emption law of 1830, Beaubien filed a claim to the seventy-five acres on which he had lived many years. The claim was denied. He applied again in 1834, and again it was denied. Then in 1835 he applied to the U. S. Land Office and tendered payment of the stipulated price, $94.61, and received a certificate of ownership. Old Jean was happy, but, alack and alas, the United States of America found that an error had been made to its disadvantage, and compelled Jean to release the land and take back his $94.61. The old homestead was forever lost to Beaubien *-* stal- wart citizen, churchman, soldier *-> but he did get a couple of lots out of the section to salve his hurts. As his son Medora wrathfully exclaimed: "The very house my father was inhab- iting, in which his family had been born and reared, was sold from him in his old age." Inexorable are sometimes the ways of man and of nature. Jean and other members of the Beaubien family carried on a 43 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES court fight for many years to regain the homestead; but law is law, and their claim was denied. Today, there is only history of Jean Baptiste Beaubien, and of the little log cabin on the site of which now stands our splendid Public Library Building. 44 BURNS HOUSE -1804 EAST SIDE OF STATE STREET, NORTH OF THE BRIDGE IN 1812 ON, OR VERY NEAR STATE STREET, NORTH OF and close to the river, stood a little house, the occupants of which had their share of the terrible experiences be- fore, during, and after the Fort Dearborn massacre. The house was built in 1804, but by whom is not known; nor is it known who occupied it before the Burns family lived in it, which was in 1812. Thomas Burns was a former soldier of the garrison, whose enlistment had expired the year before. His wife had been married previously to a man by the name of Cooper with whom she had several children, some of them old enough in 1812 to take part in the battle in which all but two lost their lives. There is nothing remarkable about the house, except that it was one of the first built on the site of Chicago, and that it was the scene of one of the most revolting acts of brutality in that bloodbath of 1812 which was so full of horrors. It is with the Burns family rather than with the house that our story deals. There was tenseness in the little house in the early part of 1812. Tecumseh and the Prophet were exciting the Indians to extermination of all white settlers, and tomahawks and scalping knives left bloody trails near and far. On April 6th a blessed event in the little house diverted attention from fear for the moment as Mrs. Burns held in her arms the firstborn of her second marriage. On the day following, April 7th, the Indians perpetrated their fiendishness at the Lee farm, at present Racine Ave- nue and the South Branch, and from across the river came the 45 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES dread warning: "The Indians! the Indians! Killing and scalping on Lee's farm!'' Mrs. John Kinzie, visiting in the Burns home at the time, spread the alarm north of the river, and quickly everyone not of Indian blood was within the protecting palisades of the Fort or in the factor's building with its heavy log walls and its port- holes »-* all but Mrs. Burns and her infant daughter. Ensign Ronan, who in a later controversy with his com- manding officer was insinuatingly asked if he was afraid, crossed the river and carried the woman and the child to the Fort, thus already having answered to the taunt which in the massacre he wiped away with his life. Within the palisades and in the factor's house soldiers and civilians were huddled in virtual siege until the 15th of Aug- ust, while around them five hundred painted savages yelled and danced in anticipation of many scalps for their wigwams. The scalp of Burns would be one of them; those of three of his stepsons would also hang as evidence of an Indian's perverted token of bravery; and his nine-year-old stepdaugh- ter's tresses would "disgrace" a chief's scalp pole. After the battle on August 15th >—> described in another chapter *-* torture was the lot of those who were so severely wounded that they would die before ransom could be received for them. Among them was Burns, who had fought valiantly to save women and children in that theatre of horror of the covered wagons, where women fought to the death and chil- dren screamed in terror as the fiends butchered and mutilated. Mortally wounded and crazed by the sight of his family being murdered and scalped, Burns had yet to undergo severe tor- ture. While he was lying groaning in pain, a squaw took a pitchfork and with it tore at his wounds until he expired. 46 BURNS HOUSE ~ 1804 Three of his stepsons were killed, their scalps torn from their lifeless bodies, hut for his nine-year-old stepdaughter there was no such merciful prelude. Screaming, fighting with all the strength of her few years, she was dragged out of a wagon. The scalping knife circled around her head and the scalp was torn off. A less fiendish Indian saved her from death ty the tomahawk, but for the rest of her life she carried the red badge of Indian cruelty. The massacre was over, but the deviltry of the red demons was not sated. Into the night, and through the next day, screams of the unfortunates could be heard. At the Burns house the most inhuman act was yet to be staged. Here a woman in advanced stage of pregnancy was cut open. As an eyewitness related: "I saw an Indian cut open a pregnant woman, take the living child from her womb and dash its head against this very house" >—> the Burns house. Mrs. Burns and two daughters, one the infant born April 6th, the other the nine-year-old girl who was scalped, were taken to a village on Fox River. Here they were kept prisoners and were subjected to much abuse. In 1813 they were ran- somed and taken to Detroit, where they lived for several years. Mrs. Burns applied for a pension as a soldier's widow, but this was refused her. She died in that city in 1823. Both of her daughters eventually married there. The Burns house was used by Mr. Jouett as an agency house in 1817, but nothing is known of its final fate. On its site today there are railroad tracks, and a new bridge has been built across the river where Ensign Ronan took Mrs. Burns in a canoe. Removal of the old bridge to make room for the new one uncovered the original level of ground, inter- laced with many footpaths of workmen who sought a short cut. 47 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES Were it not for trie railroad tracks the whole would have some resemblance to what it was in 1812 when the little Burns house stood on it. But across the river and all around are skyscrapers and the traffic of a new day. 48 LEES PLACE ~ HARDSCRABBLE ~ 1812 RACINE AVENUE AND THE SOUTH BRANCH WHERE TODAY A MAZE OF RAILROAD TRACKS, LUMBER YARDS, factories and river slips cover a quarter section or land north of the South Branch at Racine Avenue, there was in 1812 the first real farm in this part of the country. There is supposed to have teen some sort of farm before 1800 at present Fulton Street and the river, but there is no record other than that, many years later, corn hills could be seen there. Of Lee's Place there is not only written record, but also evidence of bloodshed and romance. Charles Lee came to these parts about 1805, and lived with his wife and children in a cabin near the Fort >— * probably the one at Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue which Beau- 49 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES bien "bought from the rightful owner in 1812" built about 1804, according to his son's affidavit made years later. Lee and a Mr. Russell got ownership to the farm at Racine Avenue some time after 1805, and had cattle, farm equip- ment and several buildings. It is not possible to give the exact location of the dwelling and the barns, but it was somewhere near present Racine Avenue between Twenty-second Street and the river. There was considerable timber about, and the fields were fenced with split rails. In 1812 the farm was operated for Mr. Lee by a Liberty White who had as helpers a Canadian by the name of Cardin, a discharged soldier by the name of Kelso, and Mr. Lee's son, a young lad. Indians, who were becoming more and more hostile as the war of 1812 drew near, had made raids on other settlements, but up to April 7th, there had been no attack near Fort Dear- born. On the evening of that day, a band of Winnebagoes in full war paint and regalia came to Lee's Place, and imme- diately became abusive. Kelso and the boy, on pretext of having to cross the river to give attention to some cattle, made their escape, hastened to the Fort and the four cabins, and shouted the alarm. Some soldiers were on a fishing trip up the river, and while everyone near the Fort was hurrying to it and the factor's house for safety, cannon were fired to warn the soldiers, who immediately sensed that danger was near, and started for the Fort. Arriving at Lee's Place they found the mutilated bodies of White and Cardin, a dog standing guard over them. None of the perpetrators has left a record of what took place, and 50 LEE'S PLACE ~ HABDSCRABBLE ~ 1812 one can tut imagine the terrible scene or fearful struggle of two against a dozen or more ; the diabolical war whoops or the savages; the tomahawks finding lodgment in warm bodies; the scalping knife circling around the heads; the scalps torn away amidst exultant yells of the red fiends. Mr. White had been shot several times and had been mu- tilated with knife and tomahawk, his face, throat, and body slashed. Mr. Cardin had also been shot and scalped, but was otherwise less disfigured ~ probably being the last to suffer, and hurriedly left by the Indians who, no doubt, feared arrival of soldiers from the Fort. Both Mr. Kelso and the Lee boy met death in the massacre four months later, having probably been sworn in as members of the militia who were killed to the last man. Mr. Lee also died on that bloody field, as did all his other children except an infant, who, with Mrs. Lee, survived. A daughter about twelve years old was severely wounded. Someone »-* who, is not known *— < had tied her on a horse during the melee, probably expecting the horse to carry her to safety, and the horse galloped away with the half-dead girl dangling as a dead weight. Black Partridge, Potawatomi chief, caught the horse, and seeing the condition of the girl, drove his tomahawk into her brain. Years later he said that this had been an act of mercy but that he had found it the most difficult task of his life to perform. In the division of prisoners after the massacre, Mrs. Lee and her infant were allotted to Black Partridge. Whether or not he was already then fond of Mrs. Lee is not known; but later he did want to marry her *-* something that Mrs. Lee does not seem to have agreed to. The story goes that after some time in the Indian village, Mrs. Lees baby became sick, and 51 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES Black Partridge took her and the child to a French trader *— Mr. Dupin *— who prescribed for the child, ransomed Mrs. Lee, and later married her. Black Partridge was of line character, staunch in his Indian affiliation; but realizing the futility of further struggle against the inexorable advance of the whites, he tried to lead his people to a peaceful settlement of their grievances. For his efforts he was given a medal by the United States. He was employed as clerk and interpreter from 1849 to the year of his death in Toronto, Canada, in 1863. Thus the story of the first act in the drama of the Fort Dear- born massacre, and somewhere around Racine Avenue south of Twenty- second Street there are the unmarked graves of Mr. Kelso and Mr. White >— < graves over which commerce and in- dustry of today pulsate. After the second Fort was built, a Mr. Craft had the Lee Place as a trading post. He probably was the one who named the section Hardscrabble after four or five cabins had been built there. It was known by this name for many years. There was a trail from the Fort to Hardscrabble along present Blue Island Avenue and also one south of the river along Archer Avenue to a trading post operated on that side by a Mr. Heacock. Alexander Robinson had a cabin at Hardscrabble. Mr. Laughton had a trading post a little to the west >— probably at Damen Avenue near which Marquette's cabin had stood in 1674. Old John Beaubien had a farm there in 1840 »— » prob- ably the original Lee quarter section *-* and buried his second wife on it. Another interesting story about the place is of the Galla- ways. Mr. Gallaway and his family came to Chicago in 1826. 52 LEE'S PLACE ~ HARDSCRABBLE ~ 1812 They could fend no place to live, and Alexander Robinson offered them his cabin at Hardscrabble as abode, rent free. Here, one evening, some Indians arrived while Mrs. Gallaway and her daughter Mary were alone. The Indians may have meant no harm, but Mrs. Gallaway was tensed with the knowledge of what had happened fourteen years before, and barricading herself and daughter she stood for hours with an ax in hand, expecting a head to come through a window or door; but the Indians got tired of trying to gain admittance *-* probably only wanting food and shelter *- and went to Laugh- ton's cabin a short distance west. The next year the Gallaway s moved to "Grand Rapids," near present Marseilles, Illinois, and here some time later Archibald Clybourn met Mary, the daughter, who became Mrs. Clybourn ^ one of "The Clybourns" of our present great city. It is difficult now to visualize Lee's Place and Hardscrabble in the section with all its traffic of ships and trucks and fac- tories of today, but here and there are spots ^ a little tumble- down cottage, a great tree, a small out-of-the-way clearing *-< that draw thoughts wonderingly to the long ago of 1812 when the Indian war cry was heard there instead of the din of mod- ern industry and commerce in one of the greatest cities in the world. 53 CHIEF ROBINSON CEMETERY EAST RIVER ROAD AND LAWRENCE AVENUE A FEW FEET WEST OF EAST RIVER ROAD, NEAR THE DES PLAINES River, and a few hundred feet north of Lawrence Avenue, is a private cemetery in which Alexander Robinson, chief of the Potawatomis, lies at rest in environments that still retain some likeness to the primeval forests in which his race were rulers supreme. About the chief, said to have been one hundred ten years old when he was buried there in 1872, lie some of his descendants. Chee-chee-pin-quay ■— Alexander Robinson *—* was one of those Indians who recognized the futility in continuing a strug- gle against the overwhelming force of the white avalanche, and made every effort to effect peace and friendship be- tween the two races. In 1827, when the Potawatomis were in war council at present State and Illinois Streets, and it seemed that they were about to decide to go on the warpath as allies of the Win- nebagoes, Robinson rose and defiantly said, "^1 fought the white men as long as there was any hope ; but when I saw our warriors become few and weak and the white men become many and strong, I knew that all hope of success was gone. I then said to the Whites, 'Let us live at peace.' I will be your friend; I don't speak with two tongues (don't lie) . You intend to take up the tomahawk against the whites; but first cut me in two, throw one half to my white brothers, keep the other half for my Indian brothers, then fight. I will not hear the war whoop.' 1 I. Henry H. Hurlkut, Chicago Antiquities, (Chicago: printed for the author by Fergus Printing Co. 1881). 55 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES His eloquence swung the tide of decision, and the Pota- watomis did not go on the warpath. In 1812 the Potawatomis were settled in northern Illinois, the Winnebagoes in southern Wisconsin, the Sauks and Foxes about Rock Island, and the Miamis in Indiana. The Potawatomis formed an early attachment lor the French which later swung towards the British. Near the end of the war of 1812 they became a little more friendly towards the Ameri- cans, but as a whole they took sides with the British. After the war they were entirely peaceable and refused to participate in the Winnebago and Black Hawk outbreaks. Chief Robinson is said to have been born in 1762, but in court in 1858, where he was summoned as a witness »— Abra- ham Lincoln being one of the attorneys >—< he is said to have answered that he did not know the exact year of his birth. His father was a Scotch trader and his mother an Ottawa woman. In 1826 he married Catherine Chevalier, daughter of a Potawatomi chief on the Calumet River, the marriage be- ing performed by John Kinzie. When his father-in-law died, Robinson became chief of the band. Wliatever written history says of him is to his credit. He arrived too late to use his influence with his people to prevent the massacre, but he probably did his part to enable the Kinzies to depart in safety, and he escorted them to St. Joseph, after- wards rowing Captain and Mrs. Heald to Mackinac, a dis- tance of several hundred miles. He had a little cabin at present Racine Avenue and the South Branch in 1826, and gave the use of it to the Gallaways, who had no other place to live. About 1830 he had a cabin on the north side of present Lake Street, just west of the river, 56 CHIEF ROBINSON CEMETERY where he had a store or tavern that seems to have been more for help to his people than for profit. His mark appears for his nation on treaties with the United States, and he served honorably in various capacities in Chi- cago, being also one of the signers to a petition for the first Catholic church. By the treaty of 1829 he was awarded the two sections of land on the Des Plaines on which he is buried, and in 1832 and again in 1833 he was awarded annuities of $200 and $300 respectively. In 1836 he accompanied his people as they started to their selected reservation, but Chicago had taken its hold on him, and he turned back to make his home on his land near it. Many years later he was visited by a young man who reported him as "the finest gentleman I have ever seen." His little cabin at Hardscrabble and the one at Lake Street have long since gone the way of all perishables, but under the trees in a little private cemetery near the Des Plaines there will remain, for all time, earth to earth in which the past and the present mingle ; and over it a huge boulder on which is in- scribed, "Alexander Robinson, Chief of the Potawatomis, Chippewas and Ottawas. Aged 110 years, April 22nd, 1872." 57 AtoJ ^\V °£^ e n^^ Jl{ichi S an H /M '"; \V| CHICAGO W-** "^f^- £ S Wsent ^ 1 y ff iJ=^ !i!£ - E5: lfe^3^ r V AURORA *&~z^~y S/RW-** *" \ « NAPERVllLE _ *T /'' ' W> ■"'•'!•• ^*X .6* ...» /- 'V' ^> PRESENT C <" U ™S?1 \ ^fr** BLUE-X-, iTjLJ»V ^f%° isiano. y^KVuwK ^/PLAINFIELO 1/ ^ f PRESENT AS HAMMOND f I OOUET "dy *¥ f f r &>X OTTAWA jS^ '&* V yr £caie of- Miles X present Chicago X CityJiimits PRESENT ^*C^S«. ^MANTENO INDIAN BOUNDARY LINE ~ 1816 CLARK STREET AND ROGERS AVENUE (Marker on corner building <■— Rogers Avenue side) SOMETIMES ONE MAY WONDER WHY OUR GOOD CITY COUNCIL makes a change in the name of a street which already has been named quite properly to commemorate a historic event or a famous person. Thus it is with Rogers Avenue, which for many years was called 'Indian Boundary Road" to designate one of the boundary lines of a piece of land ceded to the United States in 1816 by the Potawatomis, Ottawas, and Chippewas. The treaty of 1816 provided for transfer, from the Indians to 59 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES the United States, of a strip of land twenty miles wide, running from points ten miles north and ten miles south of the mouth of the Chicago River to points on the Fox and the Kankakee Rivers. The point north of the Chicago is at what is now Rogers Avenue and the point south of the Chicago is at the mouth of the Calumet River. Description is not verbatim but the area in question is approximately as outlined. This strip of land was acquired for the purpose of building a canal from Chicago to the Illinois River, as eventually achieved in 1900 when our present Drainage Canal was opened. On this strip, Chicago and other towns were platted. From it "canal lots" were sold to promote the building of the first canal, known as the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The development of these towns, and the increased value of the land, made pos- sible the ultimate realization of the present great waterway. The boundary lines, both northern and southern, running diagonally across township and section lines as surveyed by the government have been, and are, playing havoc with real- estate titles because of the multitude of triangular and other irregular designations of this or that township, section, quarter or lot. Now only a plaque at Clark Street and Rogers Avenue is left to tell those who wonder that a little east of it ^-> at the lake and Rogers Avenue >— a line of survey started which ran to the Fox River at a point ten miles from its junction with the Illinois River, at Ottawa. The old Boundary Road is now Rogers Avenue from Sheri- dan Road to Ridge Boulevard, and from Granville and Ham- lin to a little west of Kostner ; starting again near Montrose and Nashville Avenues and running to Belmont Avenue near the Des Plaines River, it is known as Forest Preserve Drive. 60 INDIAN BOUNDARY LINE ~ 1816 The boundary lines are shown on maps as single lines drawn through forest preserves, and they have little meaning to most people who look at them. With present day needs for "short cuts" it would seem to be a splendid idea to build high- ways along the entire length of both boundary lines to care for the ever increasing traffic in and about our city, thus mark- ing for all time a strip of land acquired in 1816 with a vision of its importance in the development of our great city and state. 61 THE MASSACRE -1812 EIGHTEENTH STREET AND CALUMET AVENUE (Marker on American Express Building) SOME OF US HAVE SEEN A COTTONWOOD TREE STANDING IN THE middle of Eighteenth Street at Calumet Avenue, and near it a monument showing two Indians fighting over a woman who is drawing a knife from the scabbard on the belt of one of the savages. The monument now stands in the building of the Chicago Historical Society at Clark Street and North Avenue. The tree was still in leaf close to the end of last century, and had teen allowed to remain in its unusual place in a paved street because it marked a spot on which one of the most desperate battles of the War of 1812 was fought by a small garrison against Indians outnumbering them nearly ten to one. 63 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES On the 15th of August, 1812, at nine in the morning, the main gate to Fort Dearborn was thrown open, and to the strains of a funeral dirge, garrison and civilians marched out to what was to be death for about half of them a few minutes later. Heading the column was Captain Wells, the "white" In- dian, who had blackened his face i—* Indian sign of impending disaster *-* and fifteen of the thirty Miamis whom he had brought from Fort Wayne, all mounted; next came the regu- lars, of whom there were fifty-four or fifty-five, and twelve civilians sworn in as militia, all on foot. Next were Mrs. Heald and Mrs. Helm, both mounted. Following them were prairie schooners with baggage and eight women and eighteen chil- dren. Closing the procession came the other fifteen Miamis, on horseback. Mrs. Kinzie and her four children had been placed in a boat with a crew to be taken around the lake to St. Joseph. The boat was slowly rowed down the river, parallel to the column which proceeded south on what is now Michigan Avenue. There are four major sources of information regarding what followed, all varying considerably in details, and one will have to make a composite description and use some judgment in order to reconcile one with the other and get a somewhat true picture. The four sources are Mrs. John H. Kinzie's Wau Bun, Captain Heald' s and Lieutenant Helm's accounts (see Milo M. Quaife's Chicago and the Old Northwest) , and Mrs. Heald's account as told by her son, in Kirkland's The Chicago Massacre. The column had reached present Roosevelt Road when a friendly Indian rushed to the boat then about to enter the 64 THE MASSACRE ~ 1812 lake and told Mrs. Kinzie to return at once to the Fort because the column was about to he attacked. To the right of the column was the "escort of safe passage" 9-* five hundred Indians with painted bodies and faces, scalp locks tied conveniently, but leering in confident strength of superior numbers and arms in anticipation of the scalps to be taken. Near present Roosevelt Road they veered to the right and disappeared behind dunes, advancing stealthily to ambush at Eighteenth Street and Calumet Avenue. Here the sand would drink greedily the blood of the innocents, the mothers, the soldiers and the pioneers. Captain Wells, who had ridden ahead of his column, galloped back swinging his cap about his head to signify that they were being surrounded. Almost at once Indian heads "popped up over the dunes like turtles," and a volley took its first toll under the "Massacre Tree." Who can be so self-sure as to say that an error was made as Captain Heald ordered a charge and the little band of sol- diers and militia went over the top to attack an army which retreated and scattered before it on the prairie? There was design in the retreat, —• the diabolical design of getting to the wagons. Soon eighteen defenseless children were screaming frantically for mercy as tomahawks and scalping knives were plied with cruel efficiency that left the bodies of twelve young- sters and two women lying on the sand. From each head had been torn a scalp *-* a woman's crowning glory or a child's tawny locks. A woman named Mrs. Corbin preferred to die rather than become the object of lust of a tribe, but not willingly nor su- pinely. Desperately she fought to make her death as costly as could be, and, literally hacked to pieces, she achieved her 65 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES choice. Nine other women in that arena of Hell were not so determined, and as captives some of them spent many months of mistreatment in the tents and in the cornfields of their Indian captors. Fortunate was she whose lot it was to fall into the hands of a less brutal master! The Burns girl screamed as her scalp was torn from her head, but a friendly squaw intervened to save her life. No such timely aid came to the rescue of twelve other youngsters who clung to skirts of dead mothers, or held up supplicating hands to ward off the red blades that mutilated them and stilled their screams. What of the fierce, mounted Miamis? Was it cowardice, or was it lingering hate that dictated treachery and set them fleeing at the outset? Deserted by his Miamis, Weils fought on, using every bit of cunning and strategy that his life among the Indians had taught him, and several of his adversaries were brought to earth by his weapons. At last he was down, his horse pinning him to the ground in its fall. In this position he taunted his enemies into giving him the blow that ended his life and saved him from torture. Forthwith his scalp was taken, his head cut off; his heart cut out and divided among the Indians, who ate it on the spot, hoping thereby to partake of his courage. Ensign Ronan was down fighting bravely, belying the in- sinuations that he was afraid. Dr. Voorhees, army surgeon, who had been accused by Mrs. Helm of cowardice, also gave his life. (On the Black Partridge memorial monument he is seen lying under the struggling trio of Partridge, Mrs. Helm, and her attacker) . Black Partridge, Potawatomi chief, had sworn that for every member of the Kinzie family killed in the massacre he 66 THE MASSACRE ~ 1812 would take the lives of five of his own people. Finding Mrs. Helm, John Kinzie's stepdaughter, in the grasp of one of his own tribe, he immediately closed in and saved the young woman *-* hence the monument that stood on the spot where the rescue is supposed to have taken place. A scant fifteen minutes, and all was over >— all but surrender of the able-bodied who remained ; and torture for the ill-fated whose agony at the stake would be taken by the fiends in lieu of ransom. On the battlefield lay the bodies of twenty-six soldiers, all of the twelve militia, twelve children and two women *-> more than half of all who had left the Fort only a few minutes before ^ and with them a score of Indians. On the prairie, Captain Heald and his remaining force had taken a stand on rising ground. A distance away were Black Bird and his several hundred warriors. A lull had developed in the firing. To recommence would mean the annihilation of all the whites. Surrender was the only alternative, and Heald advanced to meet Black Bird between the lines to discuss terms. Again a promise was given and broken. Was it retaliation, or only Indian treachery? The survivors were to be prisoners of war, safe from loss of life and from torture; far into the night and through the next day the shrieks of victims at the stakes gave horrible evidence of the faithlessness of the red men. To give details of the battle ~ the deeds of valor and of brutality, the horrors of the aftermath at the Fort and on the way to and in the villages, the eventual fate or rescue after months of captivity »— is a story that cannot be attempted here. Another Potawatomi chief who proved his friendliness for the whites, though futile to prevent the massacre, was Chan- 67 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES donnai. Finding Mrs. Heald severely wounded and held by one or his people, he offered as ransom "a mule, and later ten bottles of whiskey/' Asked if the whiskey would be given if the captive died, he answered "Yes," and Mrs. Heald was released. Later she was assisted to escape with her husband, who was also severely wounded. Mrs. Helm and her husband, Lieutenant Helm, were also wounded, though not seriously. The Kinzies, who seem to have come through unscathed, were permitted to depart with Captain and Mrs. Heald for St. Joseph. Eventually, they reached Detroit as prisoners of war of the British; but Lieu- tenant Helm and all others not fatally wounded were distrib- uted among the chiefs and were taken as prisoners to various villages on the Fox, the Des Plaines, and other streams. Lieu- tenant Helm, who was held at Peoria, was ransomed by Mr. Forsythe, a half brother of John Kinzie, and eventually re- joined his wife. The headless body of Captain Wells is said to have been found, on the battlefield, by Sauganash, and to have been buried there. All the other bodies were still lying under the cottonwood tree and on the beach at present Eighteenth Street and Calumet Avenue when in 1816 other soldiers arrived at Chicago to build the second Fort Dearborn. The tree was permitted to remain where it stood on that fateful day in August, 1812, notwithstanding that in its later years it stood on a paved street as a hindrance to traffic in a great city. In 1893, while the tree was still standing, leafless since 1887, the beautiful monument already mentioned was dedicated with Captain Heald's son, Darius, and grandchil- dren of old John Kinzie present at the ceremonies. The monu- ment was made by the Danish sculptor Carl Rohl-Smith, and 68 THE MASSACRE ~ 1812 the models for trie Indians on it are said to be descendants of participants in the massacre. At Eighteenth Street and Calumet Avenue, on the Ameri- can Express Building, a plaque has replaced the monument to designate the spot where one of the most dramatic events in what is now Chicago took place. 69 SECOND FORT DEARBORN ~ 1816 MICHIGAN AVENUE AND WACKER DRIVE (Plaque on London Guarantee Building near Michigan Avenue corner) THE SECOND FORT DEARBORN WAS BUILT IN 1816 ON THE identical site of the first Fort, where still lay the charred logs of that post of tragedy. More gruesome evidence of the blood- bath four years before were skeletons of the victims which were still lying on the sand at Eighteenth Street and Calumet Avenue and on the lake shore; when soldiers arrived to con- struct the new Fort, their first job was to gather these remains and bury them ■— at present Michigan Avenue and Roosevelt Road. The second Fort was built very much like the first one and in a similar manner. Timber was cut north of the river along the lake and floated on it and the river to the site, cut and trimmed by hand, and joined partly by wooden pegs. It had stockades, and a blockhouse like the first Fort. Fifteen years later a lighthouse was built near the northwest corner, outside the stockade, but this fell down before being fully completed, and was replaced by another the following year. 71 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES In 1816, there were only a few white persons here and a few half-breeds and Indians around; but when the soldiers came, the Indians flocked about in great numbers. This kept the soldiers in a state of nervous tension because of their knowl- edge of the massacre, and they were constantly on guard. Though the Indians were thieving and unfriendly, nothing serious happened, and the garrison settled down to the hum- drum life at a frontier post. John Kinzie and his family returned to the "Mansion" across the river; Gurdon Hubbard arrived; gradually a few cabins were added to the four that had clustered around the old Fort. There was hunting in forest and on prairie, fishing in and skating on the lake, parties in the Fort at which Kinzie with his fiddle and a couple of fifers from the garrison again furnished the music; there was work in field and garden with which Ouilmette and Robinson helped the soldiers ; and so the years passed until 1823, when the garrison was with- drawn. There were then less than a dozen cabins and not over one hundred whites and half-breeds in Chicago *— already called by that name, though not yet incorporated as village or town. The American Fur Company had established an agency, and there was considerable traffic by trail and water. Came the Winnebago War of 1827, and once again panic drove the settlers to Fort Dearborn for refuge. Everyone was afraid of a recurrence of the massacre of 1812. A home guard was hastily sworn in, who probably expected a fate similar to that of the militia in 1812. A large body of Potawatomis had assembled for payment of their annuities, most of them leaving immediately for their villages on receipt of the war news. But one chief *- Big Foot, 72 SECOND FORT DEARBORN ~ 1816 from Lake Geneva *— who was hostile, and wanted his tribe to join the Winnebagoes, would not leave. He made his entire band remain, and during the night the soldiers' barracks were burned. It is not at all unlikely that he had something to do with starting the fire. There was a violent storm raging at the time and it appeared as if the entire Fort was doomed, but Robert Kinzie, youngest son of old John, rolled himself into a wet blanket and got up onto the roof of one of the buildings, while men and women, about forty in number, formed a line and with buckets, tubs and every available utensil passed water to him until at last the fire was under control. While this was going on, Big Foot and his band were spectators, refusing to give a hand. News of the outbreak of the Winnebago War was brought to the Fort by no less a person than Governor Cass. From Green Bay he had come up the Illinois, the Des Plaines, through Mud Lake and over the portage, in thirteen days, he and his party sleeping only a few hours on the way. That Big Foot was acting in concert with the Wmnebagoes proved correct, and it was suggested that someone go to his village and learn what action his band would take. (We will save that story for another chapter) . The man chosen to go was Shaubenee, a staunch friend of the Americans. On his return to Chicago, Shaubenee called a council of the Potawatomis, and there he, Robinson, and Caldwell used their influence and oratory to the effect that Big Foot and his adherents were thwarted in their designs ; neither his band nor any other of the Potawatomis went on the war- path. Gurdon S. Hubbard, as another Paul Revere, rode to Dan- ville for help, swimming swollen rivers, dodging lurking sav- 73 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES ages, and spreading the alarm to settlers as he went. He re- turned with 1 50 men, tut by then the scare had been found to be only a scare *—< the Winnebagoes had made peace. Again in 1832 the Indians raised the war whoop near Chicago. This time it was Black Hawk and the Sacs, who had been tricked into believing that they could retake the land near Rock Island which had been ceded to the United States. This turned out to be more than a scare, and settlers were massacred not many miles from Chicago. Again the Fort became crowded with refugees *-* from Naperville, from Plain- field, from Aurora, from a dozen straggling settlements since become thriving towns or cities. So great was the influx that the Fort and every available outhouse and makeshift hut was crowded. Then came General Winfield Scott with troops —> and with them, cholera! The Fort became a charnel house. Cholera broke out among the troops when they arrived at Detroit, two men dying there, and the General left 280 at Fort Gratiot, near the outlet of Lake Huron, of which only a few survived. While the steamer Sheldon Thompson was making its way to Chicago the army physicians spent fearful hours in a vain attempt to purge the cholera, the soldiers dropping one after another of their companions into the lake. On the arrival of the troops, at two o'clock in the morning, the inhabitants of Chicago were awakened by an outcry in the streets: "General Scott's soldiers are dying with cholera,'' and when the broad light of morning came, hardly a resident was to be seen; nearly all had fled. Dr. DeChamp promptly called on the few who remained and allayed their fears, assur- ing them that the disease would be confined to the Fort gar- rison. 74 SECOND FORT DEARBORN ~ 1816 The refugees soon returned, and only one of them was stricken, hut for most of the garrison there was no escape. Ere the contagion had spent its force, ninety of the men had fallen victims and had been buried without the usual military honors of a soldier or even the civil usage of a coffin. When the last spark of life was gone, the corpse was hastened to the grave already dug and was buried without ceremony. On one occasion one of the "corpses" just before he was lowered into the grave, showed signs of life and was returned to the Fort, where in a few days he recovered. The soldiers were withdrawn from the Fort in 1836, and in 1856 the Fort proper was demolished. The story goes that when it was torn down, workmen found an order for an al- lowance of one gill of whiskey for nineteen men of the first Fort's garrison, giving the name of each man, several of whom were killed in the massacre. It was dated November 12th, 1811, and how it escaped the fire in 1812 nobody knows. One interesting relic from the second Fort is the Wau-ban- see stone, now in the Chicago Historical Society's building at North Avenue and Clark Street. This prehistoric stone was standing on the Fort site, probably carried down by glaciers centuries before. When found it was about eight feet in height, weighing several tons. On its top it had a concave surface; Indian tradition had it that it had been a sacrificial altar, in the concave recess of which the hearts of victims were deposited, as they were on the altars of the Aztecs in Mexico, but it was probably used in later years for grinding corn. The stone was taken inside the palisade and set up on the parade ground, and here it got its dual name of Wau- ban-see and The Rock. The first was after the Pota- watomi Chief Wau-ban-see, the second as the place of pun- 75 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES ishment for soldiers guilty of minor violations of rules and regulations. Wau-ban-see was one of the participants in the massacre, and Mrs. John H. Kinzie in Wau-Bun relates that he tried to save the life of Captain Wells. Be this as it may, he was an Indian with an Indian's hardheartedness when dispensing justice, as is evident from the following incident : Two female slaves, or wives, of Wau-ban-see had a quarrel, and one of them went to the chief complaining that the other had ill- treated his children. He ordered the accused to come be- fore him and to lie down on her back on the ground. Then he ordered the accuser to take a tomahawk and dispatch her, which she did by splitting the victim's skull. In 1832, at the council between Black Hawk and Pota- watomi chiefs, Wau-ban-see was the only one who raised his voice in favor of joining the Sacs and Foxes in war against the settlements. Notwithstanding his hostility, however, he was in Chicago a good deal after the war, and was a frequent visitor at the Fort. Among the soldiers was an amateur sculptor who conceived the idea of carving on the great stone a likeness of some notable individual, and he chose Wau-ban-see. Why, nobody knows. The face only was done i— < perhaps the soldiers were ordered away before the rest could be completed. In 1866 Isaac Arnold got possession of the Wau-ban-see stone and placed it in front of his residence on Erie Street. There it stood on the fatal day in October, 1871, when fire swept away all in its path *— all but the old Wau-ban-see stone, which remains a link in the chain of history. The last building of the Fort was still in use in 1871 as a storehouse, but it was almost destroyed in the great fire of that 76 SECOND FORT DEARBORN ~ 1816 year. However, some of the logs were found and are now on exhibit in the building of the Chicago Historical Society. In 1881 Robert Lincoln dedicated a plaque to the memory of the Fort at Michigan Avenue and South Water Street. This plaque was placed on Hoyt's grocery store building, which stood on the Fort site. Today, on the London Guar- antee Building *-> Wacker Drive at the corner of Michigan Avenue i— another plaque is seen. Near it, on the bridge, are mementoes beautifully done, which thousands pass every day unmindful that they are on the historic ground where the two forts stood which gave birth to our city now pulsating with twentieth-century progress. 17 COBWEB CASTLE ~ 1819 NORTH END OF STATE STREET BRIDGE (Marker on building, 357 N. State Street, east side of building) IT MAY HAVE BEEN A CASTLE BY THE STANDARDS OF THE TIMES, but Mr. Jouett who lived in it with his family in 1816 said that it was "a little hut that a man of humanity would not suffer his negroes to live in." 1 This house stood on the east side of State Street near the north bank of the river. Since eyewitnesses have said that in 1823 there were only two houses north of the river >— the Kinzie house and Cobweb Castle ^ there is reason to believe that the latter was the Burns house, of which we have spoken in an- other chapter, which stood on or near the same spot. The Ouilmette house must have disappeared by then. Mr. Jouett was Indian Agent prior to the massacre, living in the factor's house near the Fort, but in 1811 he resigned and moved to Kentucky *-* thus escaping the fate of the unfor- tunates of 1812. In 1816 he returned and took up duties again as Indian Agent, making his home in Cobweb Castle. Why it was called Cobweb is not definitely known, but a story goes that a bachelor living in it *— Alexander Wolcott, who succeeded Jouett in 1819 ^ hated flies so much that he cultivated spiders, and that the hut was filled with their webs. In its original state the hut was 14 x 14 feet, built of logs, but as the years passed there were additions added to it of more or less irregular shapes, sided with clapboards, so that it appears to have given some amusement by its appearance. In 1819 Alexander Wolcott, the bachelor and spider fan- cier, moved in as Indian Agent, being then twenty-nine years old. In 1823 he married Ellen Marion, John Kinzie's 1. Milo M. Quaife, Chicago and the Old Northwest, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1913). 79 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES daughter, and together they lived for several years in Cobweb Castle. As Indian Agent, Wolcott was one of the negotiators with the Indians at the treaties of 1821 and 1829; from correspond- ence which he left it appears that the "square deal" was not always observed by the government. To the agency house the Indians flocked for their annuities and payments from time to time, and a colorful sight it must have been when thousands of them gathered between present State Street and Michigan Avenue in paint and feath- ers, whooping and yelling in war dances to allay their regrets for having given up millions of acres of their land. In 1825 Wolcott was taxed $5.72 on a valuation of $572.00 *-* the total tax collected from all in the settlement was $89.47. About that time he bought the entire block between present State and Dearborn Streets, Carroll Avenue and Kinzie Street, for $692.00, and later a half quarter section adjoining, eighty acres, for $1,300.00. When the troops were withdrawn from the Fort in 1823, the Wolcotts left Cobweb Castle to take residence in one of the Fort buildings, but in 1828 they were back again in the old house. Here Alexander died in 1830, and Mrs. Wolcott lived in it »-* probably with Mrs. Helm, her half sister /— < until the following year, when she moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Again old Cobweb Castle stood forsaken, but not alone. Here and there about it »-* on the site of our present great Mer- chandise Mart, and where now great wide streets are jammed with traffic i— « a few cabins had been built. Whatever became of Cobweb Castle nobody seems to know, but somewhere in the ground at State Street and Carroll Avenue there may be remnants of its old logs. 80 WOLF POINT ~ 1826 JUNCTION OF SOUTH AND NORTH BRANCHES WITH MAIN RIVER (Marker on concrete parapet north of Franklin Street bridge) WOLF POINT PROPER IS TO THE RIGHT, SHOWING THE MILLER house. To the left is Wolf Tavern. The bridge is at present Kinzie Street over the North Branch. Green Tree Tavern is not shown <—> it would be to the left, before Wolf Tavern. Where Butler Brothers* great merchandising building and the Merchandise Mart now stand as a mark of today' s vast commercial enterprises, there was in 1828 the very beginning of Chicago's tremendous business, because on or near the corner of Lake and Canal Streets stood the very first tavern, store and hotel of the many thousands that have been built within our city. A tavern was not then the drink dispensing place that the name today implies, but usually a combination of hotel, board- 81 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES inghouse, store, and meeting place for discussion and pleas- ure of one kind or another. The land coming to a point where the north and the south branches of the river meet the main stream was then called The Point. The name Wolf Point is supposed to have been given the place because of wolves making it their gather- ing place at the time the first Fort was being built in 1803. In 1828, James Kinzie, son of John and his first wife, Mar- garet, built the first tavern in Chicago. It was only a log cabin, but it had a sort of blind front to make it look like a two-story house. It was called Wolf Tavern and had a picture of a wolf on its signpost. Near it, Alexander Robinson, the Potawatomi chief, had a little cabin that was part tavern and part store for Indians, and around it were some Indian tepees. Robinson seems to have gone into competition with Wolf Tavern, but the saying was that he had only one guest, and that he, the guest, slept on the floor. It appears that Robinson had his tavern and store more for accommodation to his tribe folk than for profit to himself. His place was generally lively with Indians in the declining glories of their latter days in Chicago, and groups of blanketed squaws with their papooses slung on their backs and braves ornamented with feathers, hung around his door in Iistlessness, while among them a white "drummer" might sometimes be seen distributing free whiskey to secure their good will. James Kinzie rented the tavern to a Mr. Wentworth, and built another across the street at the northeast corner of Lake and Canal Streets. Because there was a big tree near it, he called this the Green Tree Tavern. Another tavern, called The Miller House, was built on the point proper. 82 WOLF POINT - 1826 By 1832 there were several cabins around The Point on Canal, Clinton, Lake, and Kinzie Streets, but south of the main river and east of the South Branch there was not very much. It was beginning, however, and soon South Water Street >— now Wacker Drive >— was to become the business center, with ruinous effect to the three taverns at The Point. On Canal Street was the School House and Church. This was a little cabin owned by a Mr. Walker who held Protestant church services in it and gathered what children he could for Sunday School, assisted by Mr. See, who was mak- ing his living as a blacksmith. Hurlbut in his Chicago Antiquities says that he had occa- sion to see a map made in 1834, showing every lot on which a house was built at the time, and that it showed nineteen buildings on the west side and only two south of Lake Street in the present Loop. There was a footbridge across the North Branch at Kinzie Street, and another across the South Branch between Lake and Randolph Streets, but there was no bridge over the main river before 1834. Mr. Wentworth, who rented Wolf Tavern from James Kinzie, came to Chicago in 1829, from the Wabash country, with three yoke of oxen drawing two covered wagons con- taining all his household goods and other earthly possessions. He was trying to get back to Maine where he had been born, but seeing opportunity in the small settlement he put up at the only hotel having a signpost •— * the Wolf Tav- ern i-w and eventually took it over. He had his wife and three children with him, and at first they rented a little cabin near the tavern at five dollars per month. Shortly after his arrival he sent the oxen back to the Wabash and rented the 83 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES tavern from James Kinzie for $300 per year. He had trie tavern about a year, after which he took a claim at what is now Jefferson Park Station on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, on the Milwaukee Trail *— now Milwaukee Avenue. Here he had a sort of tavern, but in 1832 he and his family, as other settlers, took refuge in the Fort during the Black Hawk War, and then fled when Scott and his soldiers came there with the cholera. For many years thereafter he lived on his claim and ran his tavern on present Milwaukee Avenue, then out in the wild country where only a trail led to Half Day and points north. He was an odd sort of chap, who was best known by the nickname of "Old Geese" because of his habit of saying "By Geese," "The Geese you say," "You can't Geese me," etc. After "Old Geese" left, a Mr. Taylor had the tavern a short time, but soon the Loop started to get all the business, and the first hotel in Chicago was no longer a hotel. What became of this first tavern in Chicago nobody knows. The Miller House, across the North Branch, did not fare any better. This tavern was built by James Kinzie's brother- in-law, Samuel Miller, who in 1826 had married Elizabeth Kinzie, daughter of John and Margaret. The building was a small one at first, in which Sam and Elizabeth lived, and in which they and Sam's brother had a store, but later they added to it and went into competition with Wolf Tavern across the river. This was not an easy matter, because Wolf Tavern was a popular meeting place for officers and men from the Fort and had the advantage of ferry and footbridge over the South Branch /—* makeshift as they were. To overcome this, Miller built a footbridge over the North Branch at Kinzie Street, but this does not seem to have made 84 WOLF POINT ~ 1826 business any better *— the Miller House went the way of Wolf Tavern, and in 1832 it was no longer a botel. The Millers went to the Fort when the Black Hawk War gave fright to everybody, and Mrs. Miller died there, probably with the cholera. This seems to have been the last stroke of bad luck that Sam could take here, and the same year he left Chicago, going to Michigan City, where be died. Sam Miller was one of Cook County's first commissioners, and the first one to get a license to operate a tavern issued by that body. (He also built the first "estray pen," for which he received ten dollars) . It stood on the southwest corner of the public square, La Salle Street and Washington Boulevard *-» our present City Hall and County Building block. Today Wolf Point is twelve miles within the city limits on the south, nine miles within on the north, and nine miles within on the west; but only a little more than a century ago it was the beginning of all the vast commerce and life that makes ours a great city today *- a product of the spirit of "I Will" that permeated the pioneers on Wolf Point and that permeates the citizens of today. The Point proper is now vacant, giving it some resemblance to the original ground where the Indians had their cabins, but all around it is the mark of twentieth-century development, and on the concrete parapet just north of the Franklin Street bridge is a marker of its beginning. 85 GREEN TREE TAVERN ~ 1833 NORTHEAST CORNER OF LAKE AND CANAL STREETS (Marker on Butler Brothers Building, Lake Street Side) NEAR THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF LAKE AND CANAL STREETS, there stood in 1833 a big oak tree »— probably alone »-- and when James Kinzie, Chicago's first hotel builder, built an- other hotel near the tree, after giving up Wolf Tavern, he called this one Green Tree Tavern. Jim did not operate the Green Tree Tavern, but rented it to one David Clock, who in a short time turned it over to a man by the name of Edward Parsons. Jim was probably a little pre- mature with his hotel and tavern building *-* or competition across the South Branch was too keen. What with the Sau- ganash and its jolly host, and other hotels to compete with, 87 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES the Green Tree Tavern changed hands and names often. It was called The Chicago Hotel, Noyes Hotel, Railroad House, Atlantic Hotel, and West Lake Street House in the years from 1833-59. After 1859 it became a tenament house, with a saloon on the first floor. It changed operators more times than it changed names, and business could not have been too good. It was a two-story frame building facing Canal Street, and when it was new it was one of the "best hotels in town," but by present-day standards this does not place it in a high class. The one room that was bar, dining room and lounge had whitewashed walls, a few wooden benches and chairs, some plain wooden tables, and near the north end a bar and counter usually filled with umbrellas, overcoats and parcels. The west end of the bar was adorned with a large inkstand placed in a cigar box filled with No. 8 shot, in which were stuck two quill pens. Near the inkwell were several tattered newspapers. At the other end of the counter were a dozen or more short pieces of tallow candles, each placed in a hole bored in a piece of two-by-four. Hanging in a row against the wall were cloth and leather slippers, which the guests were expected to put on at night. There was also a collection of old-fashioned tin lanterns and the indispensable tinderbox. Above the tinderbox was an old, square, cherry veneer Connecticut clock. In the middle of the room, standing in a low box filled with lake sand, was a large stove for furnishing heat, and hot water for toddies, shaving, and washing. On a wall was pasted a Cook County license, costing five dollars, which permitted the keeping of an inn and bar. It contained printed regulations as to prices as follows: V2 pint rum or brandy 25^, 1 pint Do. 37V20, V2 pint gin 18%^, 1 pint 88 GREEN TREE TAVERN ~ 1833 Do. 31V4^, 1 gill whiskey 614^, Vn pint Do. 12V20, breakfast ana supper 25^, dinner 37V2^, horse feed 25^, lodging 12V2^, cider or beer 1 pint 6V4^, 1 quart 12V2^. Dinner usually consisted of roast wild duck, fricassee of prairie chicken, wild pigeon potpie, tea, coffee »— creamless but sweetened with granulated maple sugar. (If they had nothing else, they certainly had food!) There were pewter spoons, mustard in uncovered pots, and black pepper coarsely crushed by the good housewife. Hotels were primitive, and no one expected to find them otherwise in Chicago in those days. However, a few years later there were hotels that were as comfortable as any to be found in the country. In 1880 the ground on which the Green Tree Tavern stood was bought by the American Iron Company, and the building had to leave its old foundation. It was moved around the cor- ner to 33 Milwaukee Avenue, where it still stood in the present century. Many, no doubt, still remember seeing it there as an historic landmark. Today its old corner at Lake and Canal Streets is again vacant, and it can well be imagined to be as it was in 1833 when Jim Kinzie built on it the Green Tree Tavern. However, there is little else there reminding one of the long ago, because streamlined trains, huge ships, fast motor cars, and elevated trains all around it speak of the progress of a century. 89 SAUGANASH TAVERN ~ 1827 SOUTHEAST CORNER LAKE AND MARKET STREETS (Marker on corner building) "AND A JOLLY, GOOD SOUL WAS HE." IN 1826 THERE CAME TO Chicago from Detroit a jolly Frenchman in swallow-tailed coat with trass buttons, light nankeen pants, under his arm a fiddle, and under his coat a heart that was warm with hospitality and song. This was Mark Beaubien, younger brother of Jean, come to help build a city. He was twenty-six years old. There was life and wit about him, and good fellowship not for profit alone. He was a born hotel man; what more fitting than that he should go into the hotel business? Mark bought a lot from Jim Kinzie, at Lake and Market Streets, and built a small log house on it. But, alas, when the 91 HISTORIC CHICAGO SUES town was platted he found that his house was partly in Lake Street. He laughed at his error and added to his house a two-story frame structure parallel to Market Street. Asked what he would call his tavern, he answered: "By gar, I name him for the greatest man I know. Him be Sauganash, by gar." And Sauganash it was. It was built with finished lum- ber; a white jewel with blue shutters among the few clapboard log huts that made up Chicago before its incorporation as a town. In the old log house, hanging onto the addition as a child might to its mother's skirt, were a bar and an office, and in the addition were dining roorri and sleeping quarters. After a while, Mark added a little wing along Lake Street, which was used as a kitchen. A second floor must have existed in the larger building, because a guest said that he had to crawl up a ladder to the second floor where Mark "packed them on the floor and used one blanket for the lot, taking it from the one who was asleep, and with a cheery good night* spreading it over a new arrival/' A bed in those days was a luxury even in the Sauganash, which was the "best hotel in town." In the dining room was an open chimney at one end, and the seats and table were of rough lumber. Just east of the tavern along Lake Street was a flower garden. Here regular boarders (John Wentworth, later mayor, was one of them) had their own flower beds which he or she tended and had control of. The story goes that "Long John'' placed with his flowers a tiny cabbage plant which grew to such proportions that many came to see and wonder. Mr. Wentworth never explained how or by what system he grew such an immensity. The Sauganash was a favorite gathering place for the people. Mark played his fiddle and sang his French songs for 92 SAUGANASH TAVERN ~ 1827 them /— always jolly, full of fun and obliging. Here, no doubt, were discussed the Black Hawk War, the rising Rail Splitter of Salem, the election of Andrew Jackson, etc., and in it was held the first election of trustees of the town of Chicago, in 1833, when the population was said to have been less than two hundred fifty white persons. After Mark turned the Sauganash over to others to manage, it seems to have lost its attraction *-* perhaps better hotels were available. At any rate, it changed name and management several times. In 1837 it was vacant for a while, and then was used for six months as a playhouse by a company of traveling actors. In the dining room, having a capacity of three hundred, they put on such plays as "The Idiot's Wife,'' "The Stranger," "The Carpenter of Rouen," and others. In 1839 it was again used as a hotel, and intermittently it continued to be used as such under various owners until 1851, when fire destroyed the old landmark. A few years later, the Wigwam, in which Lincoln was nominated for the presidency, was built on the same site i— southeast corner of Lake and Market Streets. Mark Beaubien, who built the Sauganash, lived in or near Chicago until 1881, and died in the home of a daughter in Kankakee, Illinois. Everyone seems to have liked Mark. The Indians gave him sixty-four acres of land on the Calumet River, which he forgot all about until he took title to it forty years later. He had a pas- sion for horse racing, and promoted races wherever horses a little better than common "scrubs" could be found. He was an enterprising sort of chap, and in 1831 he got a license to operate a ferry across the South Branch, between Randolph and Lake Streets. This was a rope stretched across 93 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES the river, to which a toat or scow was attached, operated hy a windlass. "City" folks were carried free, but visitors had to pay a few cents. He has been described as a fine type of man *-< tall, of good figure, polite and generous. He was married twice, having sixteen children with his first wife, and seven with his second. In 1881, a few weeks after his death at Kankakee, Hon. John Wentworth, at an Old Settlers' gathering at the Calu- met Club, said with emotion that he had "another duty to perform, to one who was missing.'' Then, lifting an old violin, he continued, "On his deathbed Mark Beaubien willed his old violin to me, and as this Club did more for him than anyone else, I deem it my duty to bring it down and present it to the Club." That old instrument has expressed in the hands of a master the hopes and the dreams of young Chicago, of which the Sauganash Tavern and Mark Beaubien were a part. Today it may be seen in the museum of the Chicago Historical Society. 94 LAUGHTON'S FORD ^ 1828 AT DES PLAINES RIVER, ONE HUNDRED FIFTY FEET SOUTH OF STATE HIGHWAY NO. 4 BRIDGE (Marker on river bank) OUT AT LYONS, JUST NORTH OF WHERE THE DES PLAINES RIVER forks to make an island, joining again a half mile south at Portage Creek where Marquette and Joliet stepped ashore before starting their portage through Mud Lake, there is a de- pression in the ground near the river having all the earmarks of an old house site. This is supposed to be, in fact, the site of Laughtons Tavern at Laughtons ford. The ford was used by the Indians long before and long after Marquette's arrival, but its interesting history is mainly from the period of 1828, when Laughton built his tav- ern there >— that is, interesting to us Chicagoans. The old Indian trails which started from the mouth of the Chicago River to and over the Des Plaines, were at that time the only means of land travel towards the south, as they had been for centuries before. Over them Ouilmette, Gurdon Hubbard, the Kinzies, and other traders drove their oxcarts or carried their burdens, when Mud Lake was too dry for boats, on their way to the Des Plaines River and deep water. Leaving the Chicago River, the trail which led to Laugh- ton's ford went south to present Blue Island Avenue, following it and the South Branch to about Kedzie Avenue and Twenty- ninth Street. From there to the Des Plaines it followed the shore of Mud Lake, somewhere south of and in general parallel to present Ogden Avenue. There were three other fording places over the Des Plaines 95 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES »-- one at present Riverside, one between it and Laughton's, and another at present Summit —< but we are concerned now only with Laughton's. Some years after Laughton established the tavern at the ford, a plank road was built to or near it. This road ran from the Chicago River on Madison Street to Ogden, on Ogden Avenue out towards the Des Plaines, and was called the Southwestern Plank Road. Laughton had a tavern at Hardscrabble in 1827 /■— Racine and the South Branch »— but in 1828 he and his brother David built on the Des Plaines and moved out there. During the Black Hawk War, 1832, Laughton's ford was the scene of excitement as settlers swarmed across to get to safety in Fort Dearborn; and Bernard Laughton himself had his experiences. The news of the breaking out of war soon reached the set- tlers in Cook County, then comprising the present counties of Cook, McHenry, DuPage, Will, and Lake. The report reached Naperville a few days after Stillman's troops had been ingloriously defeated near Dixon, and a son of Shau- benee, sent by his father, the Potawatomi chief, brought infor- mation that the Sacs were on the Fox River, and were killing, scalping and burning at HoIIenbeck's Grove (now Millbrook) , not very far away. No time was lost in hastily gathering be- longings, and at once all but a few hurried toward Chicago. Laughton came to the settlement at Naperville shortly after, and it was decided to visit a Potawatomi camp at Big Woods (now Aurora) to get further details, if possible, of the ap- proaching Sac attack. Here they learned that the Sacs, three hundred strong, were camped in Blackberry Timbers, only four miles away; that they were bent on mischief, but that the 96 LAUGHTON'S FORD ~ 1828 Potawatomis would try to prevail upon them to spare the settlement. Laughton, who had little fear for himself, being friendly with the Indians, remained, but his companions hastily re- turned to Naperville. Here they prepared for flight, hiding in a well what of their movable possessions they could not take with them. Before they could get away, Laughton returned and urged them to hurry on because the Sacs were already on the march against the settlement. Everyone within reach was warned, and soon the ford was crowded with fleeing settlers from points west of the Des Plaines. When they reached Fort Dearborn they heard the news of the Indian Creek massacre. Other attacks on settlements more or less near Chicago kept the refugees in a state of fear and appre- hension, to which was added the horror of the cholera epi- demic. Laughton's ford, or rather Laughton's tavern, was the scene of fun and hilarity as well as business and danger *-* a sort of present-day roadhouse where Chicagoans and settlers gath- ered for a bit of frolic. In 1834 a State Militia was organized, and according to custom its officers were elected by the people from whom en- listment was made. The law was by no means popular, and a large part of the two hundred fifty population of Chicago were "agin it." Being unable to ignore the law, this majority determined to elect a colonel after their own heart >— < one that would not be too militaristic. The election for the Chicago unit was to be held at Laugh- ton's tavern, and "never had so large a crowd assembled in Cook County before." The electioneers went out for a short, sharp and decisive campaign, and in addition to ordinary 97 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES stores of crackers, cheese, dried beef, etc., they took out "one keg of brandy, four packages of loaf sugar, and sixteen dozen lemons." The election was entirely a one-sided affair, and was soon over. The successful candidate for the colonelcy was our old friend Jean Baptiste Beaubien, who, it was believed, could be depended upon for lax discipline and light fines in time of peace. It is said that a barrel was set in a spring, and the brandy, sugar and lemon juice poured into it. It must have been a potent grog at first, gradually becoming weaker as the inflow- ing water diluted it; but it turned the trick, which was what it was expected to do. Today it is difficult to find any trace of Laughton's ford or tavern, but there are still remnants of the old Portage Trail in the Forest Preserve, and with a little imagination one may picture the ford, still showing its gradual slope to the water as one stands on the banks of the Des Plaines one hundred fifty feet south of the bridge on State Highway Number Four. 98 BILLY CALDWELL'S HOUSE ~ 1828 SOUTHEAST CORNER STATE STREET AND CHICAGO AVENUE (Marker on building near Wooosn Avenue) BILLY CALDWELL *— CALLED SAUGANASH BY THE INDIANS, meaning Englishman r— was head chief of the Potawatomis, although his father was English and a colonel in the British army; but his mother was a Potawatomi. He fought with his tribe against the Americans in the battles of The Thames and of Fallen Timber, in the War of 1812 ^ was probably at Tecumseh's side when that great chief was killed, being his secretary and aide. After the war he became —- as did several other Potawatomi chiefs *-» a staunch friend of the white people, and did much to teach his tribesmen the way of the white race. He was not at the Fort on the day of the massacre but arrived the day after >—> August 16th *-* and was instrumental in saving some of the prisoners from Indian brutality. After the War of 1 8 1 2, until 1836, when he went with his tribe to their reservation in Missouri, he made his home near or in Chicago. As one mark of recognition of his efforts to promote peace after the War of 1812, the government built him a house near present State Street and Chicago Avenue. This was in 1828, and it is said that it was the first finished lumber house in Chicago. It was a one-story building with a low garret, about fifty feet long. The timber for it was cut near its site, partly finished and trimmed by hand on the spot; but brick for the chimney, hardware, and other "new-fangled gewgaws" were shipped from Cleveland. It must have been a show place of the settlement. 99 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES In it Sauganash lived witk his wife until 1836. Years later it was moved to Indiana Street *-* present Grand Avenue i-* and there it stood until the Chicago fire took it, as it did all in its path. Billys wife is said to have been a daughter of Nee-scot-nee- meg, one of the leaders of the massacre. She seems to have teen more or less of a shrew, who made the chief's life at home not too pleasant, and perhaps that had something to do with his always trying to get his people to adopt the ways and manners of the white folk. At the treaty of 1829, at Prairie Du Chien, his wife was awarded 2V2 sections of land on the North Branch, approximately from present Sauganash Avenue to the river, running west from Rogers Avenue about two miles. Part of this is now forest preserve, the rest the beautiful sub- division known as Sauganash »— < a lasting memorial to take the place of the house at Chicago Avenue and State Street, which went up in flames in the great fire of 1871. Billy was well-educated ; spoke and wrote French and Eng- lish, and spoke several Indian dialects. He offered to pay for the schooling and to buy books and clothing for all Indian children who would attend school, but few are said to have taken advantage of his offer. Yet, with all his education he was unpretentious, and on treaties he placed his mark ^X^ as did the chieftains who could not write, although he could well have done so. He is said to have been a splendid specimen of man >— tall and well-proportioned, brave and generous. Before he was given the name of Sauganash he was called Straight Tree by the Indians. The day after the massacre he saved the Kinzie family from harm at the hands of some Wabash Indians who had come 100 BILLY CALDWELL'S HOUSE ~ 1828 too late to take part in the fighting and in the division of the spoils —* the same band that looked for victims in the Ouilmette home. When the Indians found no one to molest here, they went to the Kinzie house and but for the timely arrival of Sauganash and his interference, it might have gone badly with the Kinzies, who, while befriended by some Potawatomis, were regarded as "white devils" by the Wabash band. In 1827 Caldwell was greatly instrumental in preventing the Potawatomis from joining the Winnebagoes in war against the whites, and again in 1832 his eloquence and forcefulness prevented their going on the warpath with Black Hawk. There is an interesting story of Sauganash and Shaubenee going to Big Foot's village at Lake Geneva to talk that chief into peace; but we will save that for another chapter. After the big powwow of 1835, when the last of the land in northern Illinois had been ceded by the Indians to the United States, Billy Caldwell gathered his tribe about him, and at their head he set out on the trek to Missouri. What were his emotions then? He had fought for the respect of his forefathers; he had lost that fight, but he had won the respect of his white brethren. He chose to go with his people to lead them on to a peaceful life on their new reservation. Later they were given another reservation, near Council Bluffs, Iowa. Here the chief died in 1 84 1 , sixty years old ; and the gift to him i— the house at Chicago Avenue and State Street *-* stood empty and desolate. 101 SHABBONA GROVE ~ 1829 DE KALB COUNTY, ILLINOIS SHABBONA GROVE IS AT LEAST SIXTY MILES FROM CHICAGO *— about fifteen miles south of De Kalb #-* but Shaubenee, the Potawatomi chief, is as clos^ to Chicago's history as any white or red man who had a part in its dramatic beginning. Shaubenee was the son of an Ottawa chief, and was born near the Maumee River in Ohio about 1775. He married a daughter of a Potawatomi chief whose village was on the Illinois River near present Ottawa, and when his father-in-law died, Shaubenee became chief of the band. Shortly after that, he removed the village to Shabbona Grove, in present De Kalb County. In 1807 he became associated with Billy Caldwell and Tecumseh, and was their firm ally in all their enterprises until the death of Tecumseh in the battle of the Thames. He claimed to have been at the side of Tecumseh when that chief was killed. After the War of 1812, and to the end of his life, he was a strong and constant ally of the Americans, and on more than one occasion he risked his life to save those of his white friends. In the Winnebago uprising in 1827 it was suspected that Big Foot, chief of a Potawatomi village at Lake Geneva, would go on the warpath, and Shaubenee and Sauganash volun- teered to go to the village to learn of the plans of action. Nearing the village they agreed that Shaubenee should enter alone, Caldwell remaining outside in hiding to await de- 103 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES velopments, as they were not at all certain of a friendly recep- tion. Shaubenee soon learned that their strategy was timely, for when he entered the village he was at once made a prisoner and accused of being a spy. He affected great indignation and said to Big Foot: "I was told by my braves that you desired us to join the Winnebagoes and make war on the Americans. I think the Winnebagoes have been very foolish; alone they cannot succeed, so I have come to counsel with you and to hear what you have to say. Then I will return to my people and report all that you tell me; if they shall then say we should join you, I will consent." He was held prisoner all night, but at last he was permitted to depart with one of Big Foot's braves, who was to accom- pany him to Shaubenee's village and make a report there. This placed Shaubenee and Caldwell in a dangerous situa- tion, because if it were learned that Shaubenee had not come alone, then the lives of both would surely be taken. Shaubenee was equal to this occasion, however. When he and the brave came near the place of Caldwell's concealment, he commenced complaining in a loud voice that he was sus- pected of being a spy. When quite near he said: "We must have no other person with us. We must go by ourselves." Caldwell understood and set off alone by another route. Strategy had still to be used, as Shaubenee desired to make a report at the Fort without the guard's being present. He therefore told the guard that at the Fort they were no doubt angry with Big Foot, and insinuated that it would not be well for one of his braves to go in, and the guard, himself, then sug- gested that Shaubenee go in alone. This was just what Shau- benee wanted, and he lost no time in making his report and in 104 SHABBONA GROVE ~ 1829 returning to the camp where Big Foot's brave awaited him. The next morning the two proceeded to Shaubenee's village, where a council was called and addressed by Big Foot's emis- sary, but Shaubenee's people declined to take sides with the Winnebagoes, advising Big Foot to remain neutral. Again Big Foot tried to get the Potawatomis incensed against the white settlers ■— this time in the Black Hawk War »— and once more it was Shaubenee, Caldwell, and Robinson who stood firm and kept their tribe-people neutral »— not only neutral, but in several instances even helpful to the Ameri- cans. There is something pitiful in the last attempt of the Indians to hold on to the land of their ancestors. Black Hawk has no immediate connection with the history of Chicago, and has no place in these chapters, but we shall write just a few words about him, nevertheless. Black Hawk was led to believe that he would get support from other tribes and from the British if he led the Sac and the Fox tribes across the Mississippi in an attempt to retake the land that had been ceded to the United States in 1804. He claimed that no authorized person had signed the treaty for the Sacs at St. Louis, and in March, 1832, he assembled on the west bank of the Mississippi 368 braves. They were mounted on tough muscular ponies, and, together with their squaws and half-clad children, they shivered in the humid blast of early spring, but they were bent on retaking their former land in a contest with the militia of Illinois and with the army of the United States. Crossing the Mississippi, they proceeded up the Rock River to Dixon, carrying with them all their possessions, which were more ponderous than valuable. About thirty miles north of 105 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES Dixon they made camp on Sycamore Creek, and here Black Hawk entertained Shaubenee, and other chiefs, with a dog feast, to be succeeded by councils. Shaubenee and Black Hawk had fought with the British against the Americans in 1812 and were warm friends, but although his heart was with his friend, Shaubenee refused to attend the councils, and left before they took place. Black Hawk tried to persuade him, saying: "Let all our tribes unite and we shall have an army of warriors equal in number to the trees in the forest." To this Shaubenee an- swered: "Your army would equal in number the trees in the forest, and you would encounter an army of palefaces as numerous as the leaves on those trees." Shaubenee knew that the little band of Sacs and Foxes had no chance, but he also knew that settlements would be raided, and men, women, and children slaughtered. Hastily he sent scouts from his village to warn wherever they could, and the settlers fled to Fort Dearborn for refuge. Shaubenees mark appears on the treaties of 1816, 1829 and 1833. At the treaty of 1829 he was awarded two sections of land at Shabbona, his village, on which he lived for several years after his tribe was removed to their reservation. In 1837 he was notified by the Indian Agent that by the terms of the late treaty all members of his band, with the exception of those of his own family, must remove to the reser- vation in western Missouri. Parting with those who had so long been close to him was too much for the chief, and he resolved to go with them to their new home. Unfortunately for him the Sacs and Foxes had their reser- vations in close proximity to those of the Potawatomis and Ottawas, and the hostility of a few years before, in the Black 106 SHABBONA GROVE - 1829 Hawk War, was still fresh in mind. Near warfare resulted, in which Shaubenee's eldest son and a nephew were killed, and the old chief himself narrowly escaped with his life from the vengeance of his foes. This decided him and his family to return to Illinois about a year after they had left it, and until 1849 they lived at the grove in peace and quiet with their white neighbors. The call of the tlood made itself known again, and, the Potawatomis having been moved to Kansas in the meantime, Shaubenee and his family went there to visit them, staying three years. When they returned to their home in Shabbona they found it in the hands of strangers, having been sold by the United States Land Department, which claimed that Shaubenee's right to it was voided by his extended absence. When the old chief fully realized this, he, who probably had never shed a tear before, wept like a child. But his cup of misery was not yet full. An unfeeling brute >-* the new owner >— cursed the old man for having cut a few lodge poles on what Shaubenee had thought was his own land, and set his dogs upon him. A few friends, seeing the desperate situation of the old chief and his family, purchased for him twenty acres of timberland on the Macon River south of Morris, Illinois, and built a cabin for him. Here the chief lived with part of his family in semi- poverty, in wigwams most of the time and using the cabin for storage purposes and as a barn. Shaubenee was a noble character. Why he should lose his land and live his last days in such poverty is a question unan- swerable. In later years he seems to have become a victim of drink ~ in earlier years he was very temperate. He was last seen in Chicago in 1855, four years before he died, and 107 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES was then wearing moccasins, leggings, and a plug hat with colored strings tied around it. He lies buried in Morris, Illi- nois. For many years his grave was forgotten and unmarked, but some years ago a stone marker was placed on the last rest- ing place of the chief who pioneered for a great city. 108 FIRST POST OFFICE - 1832 NORTHWEST CORNER OF LAKE STREET AND WACKER DRIVE (Marker near the corner) WHEN ONE SEES OUR PRESENT GREAT, BEAUTIFUL POST OFFICE at Canal and Van Buren Streets, many stories high and occu- pying two square blocks of ground, with facilities to handle hundreds of millions of pieces of mail daily, it is difficult to be- lieve that in our grandfathers' time the postmaster for this area and a hundred miles around, 'kept his post office in his boots, and the mail in his hat." The post office here in 1832 was in a log cabin standing on the sharp corner at Lake and Water Streets i— now Wacker Drive. Previous to that a Mr. Bailey had been postmaster in old John Kinzie's house, but it appears that a Mr. Hogan was doing the work of postmaster, clerk and carrier. Hogan came to Chicago in 1830, and, the year following, he built the log house with which our story is concerned. He was 109 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES a bachelor and an enterprising chap who at once went into the fur, hide, and grocery business. His cabin was only 20 x 45 feet, the length of the house being parallel to Lake Street. In 1832, Hogan was made postmaster. On the east half of his house he had a sign "U. S. Post Office," and on the west half "Brewster, Hogan and Company." In this west half he had his stock of goods, and somewhere in it he had his bed. Water Street >— now Wacker Drive /— was then the begin- ning of the Loop of Chicago; but a sorry looking business center it was. Across the river, around the Point, were a few cabins, and south of Lake Street, east of the South Branch, were a few more; but except for these there were sloughs, some small fields, Indian camps, endless prairie over which the trails led, and the Fort at present Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive. On the east side of Water Street were two or three cabins between Lake and La Salle Streets. On the southeast corner of Franklin was the Temple Building, in which the First Pres- byterian services were held, and on the corner of La Salle a real-estate office >—> the latter would be the corner on which now stands the Builders Building. Near Clark Street was a bookstore, and between Clark and Dearborn Streets a general merchandise store, in which a meeting was held to "resolve to organize the Town of Chicago." At the corner of Clark Street was a hardware store, and over it the office of the Chicago Democrat — < Chicago's first newspaper. On Franklin Street, near Water Street, was a small shop in which tomahawks and calumets were made. This was Chicago when it got its first post office. The post office was the lounging place for civilian and soldier; and when the mail arrived, three times weekly by pony express <— later by 110 FIR&T POST OFFICE ~ 1832 two- or four-horse stage »— * from Niles, Michigan, one person would mount a box and forthwith read the news to the crowd. Usually there were only a dozen letters in one delivery. Postage stamps were not used, nor were envelopes <— the writ- ing paper was folded, and held together by a "wafer" or, if a person were of the elite, by sealing wax. As prepayment was not compulsory, much mail went to the dead-letter office. The rate for letters was six and one-half cents for a distance up to thirty miles, running to twenty-five cents over four hundred miles. When stages were put to use, they carried passengers as well as mail —• in fact, there seems to have been more need for passenger service than for mail service, because after a couple of years, when the Chicago office got "an elegant, thorough brace post carriage for mail between Chicago and Ottawa, there was no mail in the bag on its first trip." The postmaster took no chances, but posted notices: "Post- age must be paid in advance. Stage leaves Chicago at 5 a.m., arrives Joliet 7 p.m. Leaves Chicago 6 a.m., arrives Mc- Clure's on Fox River at 7 p. m." Hogan, the builder of the cabin at Lake Street and Wacker Drive, seems to have been an excellent person. He was lieu- tenant in the Black Hawk War, alderman of Chicago after 1837, and justice of the peace. He seems to have done quite well financially, but like many others in the 1837 panic he lost all he had. During the gold rush to California he tried his luck there —> how successful he was is not known. On his way he stopped on the Potawatomi reservation, where he was hailed as a long lost brother. He died in Boonesville, Missouri, in 1868. Ill HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES We are at the end of our story of the beginning of a postal service in this great city of ours. Now thousands of tons of mail come and go by plane, by rail, by motor, and are handled by employees who carry on for greater and better service, as did Hogan in the little log cabin by the river at Lake Street and Wacker Drive. 112 ~^^s=i^=fe3%<^ FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH SOUTHWEST CORNER OF LAKE AND STATE STREETS (Marker on State-Lake Building, State Street side) A LITTLE MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, STATE STREET was the east boundary line of the town of Chicago; but it probably was not a thoroughfare, although it had been sur- veyed and named. Chicago then extended from State Street to Des Plaines Street, and from Madison Street to Kinzie Street. The streets within this area were laid out as they are today, and 113 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES with one or two exceptions they had the same names as they have now. East of State Street to the lake was the Fort reser- vation, and the block bounded by Clark, La Salle, Randolph Streets and Washington Boulevard was the Public Square r-* every little town had its public square. The town had a population of two hundred fifty, about half of them Catholic. There had been Catholic services but no permanent priest nor church. With such a number of Catho- lics in the town, however, this was urgently desired, as can be seen from a petition sent to: "The Right Rev. Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Missouri, of St. Louis, etc., etc. We, the Catholics of Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, lay before you the necessity there exists to have a pastor in this new and flourish- ing city. There are here several families of French descent, born and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, and others quite willing to aid us in supporting a pastor, who ought to be sent here before other sects obtain the upper hand, which very likely they will try to do. We have heard several persons say that were there a priest here they would join our religion in preference to any other. We count about one hundred Catholics in this town. We will not cease to pray until you have taken our important request in consideration." 3 The original petition, written in French, bears on its back the memoranda: "Received April 16, 1833. Answered April 17, 1833." It was signed by thirty-five persons, includ- ing the Beaubiens, Caldwell, Robinson, Ouilmette, and Hogan. The good Bishop not only answered immediately but also ordered Father St. Cyr to the duties of priest in the "flourishing 1. A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, (Chicago: published by A. T. Andreas, printed by R. R. Donnelly and Sons. 1884). 114 FIRST CATHOUC CHURCH city/' with its swamp and a few log cabins. Father St. Cyr lost no time either, tut reached Chicago on May first, accom- plishing the journey partly on horseback and partly on foot. He held his first service in the little cabin of Mark Beaubien, and forthwith commenced preparations for building a church. The first site selected was on Lake Street near Market Street. (Some say it was near Dearborn Street, but what matter?) The lot was offered to Father St. Cyr for $200. However, he was unable to raise that amount among the one hundred Catholics who petitioned for his appointment, and "others quite willing to aid,'' and was obliged to look for an- other location. Father St. Cyr then chose a lot at Lake and State Streets, with the privilege of buying it at the Canal Commission's valu- ation when it should be announced. This lot was one of the so- called canal lots alloted to the Commission to raise money for the building of a canal from the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River, and on this lot the first Catholic church was built; but when the price was announced some time later, it was ten thousand dollars! However, the house was up, and Father St. Cyr proceeded to tend his flock, come what might >— there could be no buying of a lot at $10,000. Be it said that the eventual purchaser of the lot allowed the church to stand until some time in 1837, or later. The church was 24 x 35 feet, twelve feet high to the roof, and built at a cost of $400. The lumber was brought in a scow from St. Joseph, Michigan. Catholic Indians as- sisted at the first Mass celebrated, and Indian women cleaned the modest building for the sacred rites, at which were present about a hundred persons. 115 HISTORIC CHICAGO SUES The church was not plastered, had only rough benches for pews, and the simplest of tables for altar and pulpit. The outside was not painted, and at first it had neither steeple nor bell. Later it was surmounted by a low, open tower, in which a small bell was hung »— the first church bell in Chicago. A picture of the church shows one side with five small windows, and a door at the far end. The front, which had no door nor windows, must have been facing Lake Street. When it was built there were no other buildings on State Street, across which were the Fort reservation, cultivated fields and a couple of cabins. A short distance from the church was a creek that emptied into the river at State Street. About 1837 Father St. Cyr was succeeded by Father O'Meara, of whom Father St. Cyr wrote: "He proved to be a notorious scoundrel. May God preserve Chicago from such a priest." Be that as it may, Father O'Meara bought a lot at the south- west corner of Michigan Avenue and Madison Street, and had the church building moved to this new location. Here it was enlarged, and soon afterwards again moved, this time to the southwest corner of Wabash Avenue and Madison Street. Later a brick church was built here, and once more the old frame was moved to make way for the new one *-> this time a short distance west on Madison Street, where it remained until the great fire of 1871 took it in its fiery embrace. The removal from the original location at Lake and State Streets, together with other circumstances, caused great dissat- isfaction to a number of the members, who refused to attend the church at its new location. At Randolph and Wells Streets this group found a room, in which services were held under Father de St. Polais, who eventually succeeded Father 116 FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH O'Meara as priest of St. Mary's at Wabash Avenue and Madison Street, and thus united the two factions. The story goes that Father O'Meara, being Irish, had a strong following of these men with ready fists, and that at one time when the Catholic Bishop of the diocese and the Vicar General from St. Louis had come to Chicago for the purpose of forcing the priest to surrender property which he held unlaw- fully *— after which they would publicly excommunicate him #— the sympathy felt by the Irish was so great that they declared they would clear out the church if any attempt were made to excommunicate their favorite. The good Bishop and the Vicar General, however, spoke soothingly to the belligerent Irishmen, at the same time warn- ing them that if they offered the slightest resistance to any pub- lic ceremony enjoined by the Church, they would themselves be subject to excommunication. This had the desired effect so that Father O'Meara consented to assign to the church the property involved and to leave the city, thereby staying pro- ceedings against him. This is the story of the first Catholic church in Chicago, which stood at the corner of Lake and State Streets, now oc- cupied by the great State-Lake Building with its theatre and a million electric lights. It is also the story of the beginning of the great Catholic church in Chicago, with its one million and a half worshipers and more than four hundred churches, who and which are a great part of the strong spiritual, civic, and social structure of our city. 117 FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH - 1833 SOUTHWEST CORNER OF LAKE AND CLARK STREETS (Marker on building near corner) "WELL, I DO REJOICE. THE FACT THAT YOU, AT THE HOUR OF our meeting, were riding at anchor within gunshot of the Fort, is like the bursting out of the sun from behind the darkest cloud.'* Thus was Jeremiah Porter, the first Presbyterian minister in Chicago, greeted on his arrival in 1833, the greet er being John Wright, one of the praying men of the village. 1 Porter had come from Fort Brady with Major Fowle and troops to relieve Captain Johnson at the Fort. Captain John- son was a devout Christian, and the good Wright had been much perturbed on account of losing him from his little flock *--* and fearful that he would have neither a sympathetic com- mander nor the minister for whom he had prayed. The very first Sunday after his arrival, Rev. Porter preached his first sermon in Chicago. The sermon was given in the Fort, the text being from John: 15, 8: 'Herein is my Father glorified, that ye hear much fruit; so shall ye he my disciples." Reverend Porter probably was not encouraged at first, for he said: "The first dreadful spectacle that met my eyes on go- ing to church was a group of Indians sitting on the ground before a miserable French dram house, playing cards, and as many trifling white men standing around to witness the game." 1. A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, (Chicago: put li shed hy A. T. Andreas, printed by R. R. Donnelly and Sons. 1884). 119 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES However, in the afternoon he was asked to preach in a little log cabin at The Point, a half mile from the Fort, and he must have been quite encouraged then, because he said: "The schoolhouse was crowded to overflowing, and many went away for want of room to stand within the doors. I think I have preached to such an audience only at Mackinac since I left Detroit." Such was the beginning of the long, intermittent sojourn of Rev. Porter and the establishment of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. For a time he preached in the Fort and in available cabins, but this arrangement was very unsatisfactory, and he advised that the sums subscribed for his support should be appropri- ated to a fund for erection of a house of worship. First a regular organization was set up as "The First Presbyterian Church." It had twenty-six members, seventeen of whom were from Fort Brady, nine being citizens of the village of Chicago. A lot at the southwest corner of Lake and Clark Streets was bought, which has been described as being "a lonely spot, almost inaccessible on account of surrounding sloughs and bogs." Lake Street at that time was beginning to take the claim of being the main street, but as yet there were not very many houses on it, and it was a mud hole, over which logs were laid for crossing at Dearborn Street. The town trustees had extended the original town boundary to Jackson Street on the south, to Ohio Street on the north and to Jefferson Street on the west, but there were only a few scat- tered houses on Water Street, Lake Street, and The Point at the junction of the river branches. The small Presbyterian congregation set to work to get its 120 FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH ~ 1833 church built, but one morning they and other citizens of the village were surprised to see a frame building on the Lake Street front of the lot, which had been raised during the night and was industriously continued during the day. But, alas for the hopes of a prospective storekeeper! His squatter s right of occupancy was not to be recognized. During the succeed- ing night in obedience to suggestions from members of the congregation, a number of oxen were noiselessly marshalled in front of the trespasser's store, heavy chains fastened to the sills of the building, and in the morning the house was found standing a distance away in Lake Street to teach certain per- sons the lesson that rights of property cannot be invaded with impunity. Meantime, the congregation's own preparations had ad- vanced, and "the timbers were cut, hewed and squared, and set up on the prairie.'' (It should have been called a slough!) "Each one gave his mite according as he was able to aid in the construction; some in mortar beds, others with saw and ham- mer; all labored for a common desire to have a house set apart exclusively for worship, and when done to be free from the crushing incubus of debt." 2 The church stood on the south end of the lot facing east. Its size was about 30 x 40 feet and the cost was $600. It was completed during the winter of 1833-34, and was dedicated on January 4, 1834. The sermon was delivered by Reverend Porter, the builder of spiritual strength and of the congregation, from the text: "Yea, the Sparrow Hath Found a House, and the Swallow a Nest for Herself, WJiere She May Lay Her Young, Even 2. A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, (Cnicago: Published by A. T. Andreas; printed by R. R. Donnelly and Sons, 1884). 121 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES Thine Altars, O Lord of Hosts, My King and My God.** During 1834 fifty-two persons were added to the member- ship of the church, and it became self-supporting. In 1835 Rev. Porter was given other work, and the congre- gation had difficulty in securing another pastor. Deacon John Wright' s letter of invitation was read with apprehension in the east, as one recipient remarked: "I've got a letter from some place out west called Chicago, asking me to come there and preach. Can you tell me where it is?" The person who had been asked could and did tell where and what it was, "A great swamp west of Lake Michigan." The preacher decided to stay in Connecticut. Some time before 1840, the little church building was moved to a lot on Clark Street, south of Washington >— why it was moved, is not known. However, on the corner of Clark and Washington Streets today is one of the greatest church edifices of our city, from the steeple of which beautiful tones of peace, faith and courage peal forth to all who have profited from the victory of the little church that stood on the swampy lot at Lake and Clark Streets. 122 FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH + 1833 SOUTHWEST CORNER OF FRANKLIN STREET AND WACKER DRIVE (Marker twenty feet west of Times Building) IN 1825 A MR. MC COY PREACHED IN FORT DEARBORN WHAT WAS probably the first Baptist sermon in Chicago. He was a man of marked ability and energy in spreading Christian faith among the natives, traveling through the wilderness to estab- lish missions, writing eventually a "History of Baptist Indian Missions." He was particularly concerned about the debauching ef- fect of whiskey on the Indians, and worked diligently to stop its distribution to the red men, who seemed to have little or no 123 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES resistance to the ' firewater's" hold on them. Governor Lewis Cass reported from a treaty at Chicago that a principal chief of the Potawatomis, nearly eighty years old, was irritated at the continued refusal of whiskey, and exclaimed: "We care not for the land, the money or the goods ; it is the whiskey we want t—> give us the whiskey!" McCoy did not stay in Chicago long enough to establish a church. This remained for Dr. Temple, who arrived here with his family in July, 1833. He was a missionary of the Ameri- can Baptist Home Mission Society, and secured appointment to Chicago as a place where a church was badly needed. Besides heing a preacher, he was a physician and also a man who could and would do manual labor for his living. To help his mission, he secured a contract to carry mail from and to Chicago and Fort Howard (Green Bay) Wisconsin. There were only twenty to thirty Baptists in Chicago when he arrived, nevertheless, he set to with a will to raise money for a church, and he started the subscription with his own do- nation of $100. A lot was bought on Water Street »— now Wacker Drive *-* near Franklin Street and on it was built the first house for worship in Chicago. It was a two-story frame building, the upper floor used as a school, the lower floor for a church; and it was used in this way for some time by Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians alike. It was named Temple Building after Dr. Temple, and as such it will be known for all time as the first church in Chicago p-i there had been services in the Walker cabin, in the Kinzie "Mansion," and elsewhere, but the Temple Build- ing is the first house built for exclusive church and school use. In August, 1833, a regular minister arrived to serve in the church *— Rev. Freeman »— and after a few months the 124 FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH ~ 1833 Baptist congregation had increased by about a dozen persons. A Miss Warren was engaged as teacher, and she reported that her salary was $300 per year. She said further: "I lived with Elder Freeman and his family about four blocks from the school, and there was scarcely a house between. What few buildings there were then, were mostly on Water Street (now Wacker Drive). It was not uncommon, on going to and from school, to see prairie wolves, and we were frequently annoyed by Indians. However, the greatest difficulty we had to contend with was mud. I got me a pair of gent's brogands and fastened them tight about the ankle, but mud and water would go over them, and I was obliged to get a pair of men's boots made." The business settlement of the new town was on Water Street. There was nothing on Lake Street, except the Pres- byterian church at Clark Street and the Catholic church at State Street. Up and down Water Street, between State and Wells, all the business houses and stores were built. Cabins for dwellings were scattered here and there on the sloughland south of Lake Street, and on the Point. A slough emptied into the river at the foot of State Street, and was a sort of bayou of dead water through which scows could be run as far as Randolph Street. There was a creek where the Sherman House now stands, across which a foot- bridge of four logs was thrown. Thus was Chicago in 1833-34 •— not so very long ago, measured by man's lifetime. The furniture in the Temple Building was of the most primi- tive sort, and cold and uncomfortable the congregation must have been in the bitter winter wind off the lake. And »-< Brrrr 125 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES >— a hole was made in the ice on the river for baptism by im- mersion. Rev. Freeman was as willing a worker as had been McCoy and Dr. Temple. Besides tending to his church, he organized four other congregations in nearby settlements, one being at Long Grove, fifty miles south of Chicago. Returning from Long Grove in December, 1834, his horse became sick and died, and Freeman had to make his way back to Chicago on foot. From exposure and over-exertion he became ill, and within a few days he passed away. After Rev. Freeman's death the Baptist congregation seems to have dwindled. Nevertheless, his successor, Rev. Hinton, and the members seem to have found it expedient to look for more commodious quarters. Rev. Hinton went east to try to get some money for a larger building, but he came back with only disappointment and $846.48. However, some years later the necessary funds were subscribed for a new brick church at the southeast corner of Washington and La Salle. This was an imposing structure, costing $4,500. It had a spire one hundred twelve feet from the ground, a church bell, and a clock with five dials. Whatever became of the Temple Building is not on record. It, no doubt, gave way to newer and better buildings in a greater and more imposing Chicago, as evidenced by the fine, wide Wacker Drive that has taken the place of old South Water Street, and by the great newspaper, The Chicago Times, that now occupies the many storied building at Frank- lin Street, near the site of which the old Temple Building stood. 126 DEARBORN STREET DRAWBRIDGE ~ 1834 (Marker »— First pylon east of Dearborn Street, north side of Wacker Drive) IN AUGUST, 1834, THERE WAS A MOMENTOUS CELEBRATION IN the town of Chicago, an event equal in interest and importance at that time to the dedication of our Outer Drive Bridge. Ever since the first canoe crossed from Kinzies "Mansion" to the old Fort, the problem of adequate transfer facilities over the river had been a vexing one, but the citizens thought that a real bridge which opened for the passage of ships with masts and sails seemed the solution of all their troubles in that respect »— but the trouble was augmented. This first drawbridge in Chicago was a primitive affair by present day standards, but for five years it served a purpose and took the blows of vessels and curses of pedestrians and drivers alike. It was about three hundred feet long, the open- 127 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES ing for passage of ships about sixty feet. It was a "gallows pattern,'* the frame of which stood up at each end like instru- ments of death that frightened the timid at night. On one occasion it 'would not down" at any one's bidding, and for forty-eight hours "the gallows" were raised. These "gallows" were half the length of the bridge in height, and over them a chain was windlassed to raise each half of the bridge hinged on the bank. The first facility for crossing the river, besides the canoe, was called a "grape vine ferry." It consisted of a rope, stretched across the river between Randolph and Lake Streets, along which the ferryman would pull hand over hand while stand- ing in a canoe or boat. If, and when, a boat had to pass up or down the river, the rope would be lowered to the river bot- tom until the boat had gone by. In 1829 the "grape vine" was discontinued, and a ferry was put into operation at the same location. This was a scow, which could carry heavier loads, and the ferryman had to pay a license fee of five dollars per year, and post a bond of $200 as guarantee of good service. Samuel Miller, who later had the Miller House tavern on The Point, operated this ferry for two years and then sold the scow for sixty-five dollars to Mark Beaubien who had the Sauganash tavern near the ferry, at Lake and Market Streets. Residents of Cook County were carried free of charge, but outsiders were obliged to pay: "For foot passengers, 6Vi^ ; man with horse, 12Vb#; Dearborn Sulky Chair with springs, 50^; four-wheeled wagons drawn by two horses, 37V20; load of meat cattle or mules, 10^; hogs, sheep or goats, 3$; bundle weight of goods, ware and merchandise, each bushel of grain 128 DEARBORN STREET DRAWBRIDGE ~ 1834 or other article sold by trie bushel, 6 l A^; and all other articles in equal and just proportion.'' In 1 832 the ferry was supplanted by a contraption of floating logs tied to the banks, which when loosened at one side swung with the current and allowed boats to pass. It cost $486.20, of which $200 was paid by the Indians. This bridge was in constant need of repair, because "its bulk had been lessened for the building of fires,'' being "nothing more or less than piles of wood thrown into the channel." In 1832 Sam Miller built a footbridge across the North Branch at Kinzie Street, which was later strengthened so that teams could cross on it. Thereafter a bridge quarrel seems to have started regarding special privileges for the west, the north and the south sections of town, each group of citizens wanting a bridge where it would be to its own advantage. In 1836 a petition was sent to the town trustees, asking for the removal of the floating log bridge, and for a drawbridge to be built at Lake Street "to unite and continue the said street through the town,'' but the petition was denied. The same year an attempt was made to get drawbridges built at Ran- dolph Street, and at Kinzie, but this, too, failed to materialize. In the meantime, however, the northsiders had secured a bridge at Dearborn Street *-< the bridge about which our story opens. This bridge was far from satisfactory. Ships damaged it repeatedly, and the approaches to the bridge were mudholes where teams and pedestrians stuck. Finally, in 1839, the City Council ordered its removal; but some citizens were so afraid that the order would be rescinded that they set to one night, and morning found the first draw- bridge in Chicago chopped down. 129 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES This incident was but one of many in the bridge war that had been going on for several years. In the spring of 1839 two ferries were operated >— one at Clark Street and one at State Street, and feeling ran so high that the supporters of one tried to put the other out of business. The State Street ferry was a scow large enough to accommodate two wagons and teams, and was operated by a windlass on each side of the river. The cause of this sectional warfare was mainly the great numbers of prairie schooners with grain, produce, and travelers that came from the southern and western settlements in most instances; a bridge in a certain place would give that par- ticular location business advantages. Finally a fund of $3,000 was raised by the northsiders, and in 1840 a bridge was built at Clark Street. This seems to have allayed the controversy. This was the first real swing bridge. To open it, the bridge, which was on floats, was swung by a chain and windlass to one side of the river. At the south end of the present Dearborn Street bridge is the plaque that marks the effort of our grandfathers in the solution, as the great Outer Drive bridge of today marks the progress made by the spirit of "1 will." 130 OLD TREATY ELM INTERSECTION OF ROGERS, KILBOURN AND CALDWELL AVENUES THIS TREE MARKED THE NORTHERN BOUNDARY OF THE FORT Dearborn reservation, the trail to Lake Geneva, the center of Billy Caldwell's (Chief Sauganash) reservation, and the site of the Indian treaty of 1833. Under it, probably, the chiefs of the Potawatomis signed the treaty by which they relinquished title to the last of their land east of the Mississippi, about five 131 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES million acres, all of which, with the exception of some small res- ervations, was claimed by the United Tribes in Illinois and Michigan. The considerations for yielding their land were stated in Articles 2 and 3, and were: "A tract of land of like extent as that ceded, five million acres, situated on the east bank of the Missouri River.'' In addition the government was to pay $850,000 in cash and goods, $280,000 of which was payable in yearly installments over a period of twenty years. Also in addition were grants of annuities to Sauganash, Robinson, and other chiefs of from $200 to $400; also $3,500 for claims of other chiefs for land to which they held grants, and $275,000 to numerous persons, white and red, for claims of one kind or another, or in lieu of reservations. This important document was signed by seventy-four chiefs, all but one affixing only his x. Among these were Alexander Robinson and Sauganash, although both could have written their names. In the summer of 1835 the Potawatomis came for the last time to Chicago to receive their annuities, and to start for their western reservation. The total number assembled was about five thousand, and a colorful sight they must have been as they performed their war dances as a sort of farewell to their old home. Many were entirely naked except for breech cloth, their bodies adorned with feathers and paint, each movement in the dance accompanied by a fierce yell and the tinkle of anklets. On their faces particularly they seemed to have exhausted their art of hideous decoration, and foreheads, cheeks and noses were covered with curved stripes of every color, which were edged in black points that gave the appearance of a 132 OLD TREATY ELM horrid grin over the entire countenance. The long, coarse black hair was gathered into scalplocks on the tops of their heads and decorated with a profusion of hawks' and eagles' feathers, some strung together so as to extend down the back nearly to the ground. This was only a little more than one hundred years ago. What magic is this that has developed in so short time a city of more than three and a half million persons, and with archi- tectural beauty and civic opportunity unsurpassed anywhere in the world? 133 STAGECOACH OFFICE ~ 1834 SOUTHWEST CORNER DEARBORN AND LAKE STREETS (Marker on Selwyn Theatre, Dearborn Street side) DR. JOHN T. TEMPLE ARRIVED IN CHICAGO EARLY IN JULY, 1833. He was a pious and earnest Baptist Christian, and came to Chicago from Washington, D. C, with a contract to carry the mails from Chicago to Fort Howard (Green Bay) . His con- tract gave him surety of a living so that his surplus energy could be used in the services of the Lord. Later he also secured the contract for carrying the mail between Chicago and Ottawa, making the first trip January 1, 1834. An advertisement that appeared in the American on August 6, 1836, specified that "John T. Temple & Co., are proprietors of a stage line from Chicago to Peoria," that "the through trip is made in two days *-* to Ottawa the first day," that "the stage 135 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES leaves Chicago at four in the morning and arrives at Juliet (Joliet) at two/' and that "seats can be taken at Markle's Ex- change Coffee House." The same paper states: April 1, 1837, that Dr. Temple "has sold his stage line," and in another issue the doctor advertised that he had resumed the practice of medicine at 214 Lake Street. Stage lines were now running out of Chicago in several directions. Whoever had the mail contract carried the pas- sengers and light parcels as well. John Frink succeeded Dr. Temple, and Frink and Bingham and Frink and Walker, with offices at the southwest corner of Dearborn and Lake Streets, became famous throughout the region. Frink's barn was on the west side of Wabash Avenue, north of Randolph Street, his residence was about half a block east of the barn, and his home lot was used as a sort of asylum for the superannuated stagecoaches that were discarded and had given way to more modern types. The stagecoach of the eighteen thirties was not uncomfort- able to ride in when roads were dry and hard, but often these roads were but mudholes in which both horses and coaches wallowed and stuck, and this resulted in anything but comfort to passengers, and in breaking of the coaches. The shape of the coach was usually oval, flattened on top to permit the carrying of baggage. Within were three cross seats, each designed to hold three passengers, those on the front seat facing the rear, the others facing toward the front of the coach. The driver sat on an elevated seat in front of the covered body, and at the rear was a triangular, leather-covered space known as the "boot," wherein such baggage was bestowed as did not ride on top, and the enclosed body was supported 136 STAGECOACH OFFICE ~ 1834 by heavy "thorough traces," made of numerous strips of leather riveted together. Frink and Walker, who succeeded Temple, and Frink and Bingham were by far the most extensive operators in northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin and Indiana, eventually having regularly scheduled stage routes to all principal points within a couple of hundred miles of Chicago. The fare charged was usually five or six cents per mile. In the middle forties there were eight arrivals and depar- tures of stages in Chicago per day, with an average of fifteen passengers for each *-* about 44,000 for a year. There was a daily stage service between Chicago and Peoria. Tri-weekly stages ran to Galena, both by way of Dixon and over the northern route through Freeport and Rockford. Between Chicago and Detroit, and Chicago and Milwaukee, a daily ' schedule was established. From Chicago to Milwaukee, a distance of ninety-seven miles, the traveler might ride in sum- mer for three dollars, while in winter he paid five dollars, the trip requiring one and one-half days' time, with stops overnight in Kenosha. The traveler who embarked upon an extended journey by stage committed himself to a venture the outcome of which no man could foresee. To be sure, the stage company had a schedule for the journey, but the factors making for uncertainty were numerous, and between schedule and performance there was frequently a wide difference. An English traveler in America relates that passengers were trained to respond to the drivers frequent requests to lean on one side or the other to aid in preventing the upsetting of the coach in the deep ruts with which the road abounded. "Now, gentlemen, to the right," the driver would call, and immedi- 137 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES ately the passengers would project their bodies halfway out of the coach in the direction indicated. "Now, gentlemen, to the left," would be heard, and all would throw themselves in this direction. Such was travel in the days of our grandfathers. Who can believe it when he travels by train at better than sixty miles an hour out of Chicago and speeds smoothly by automobile on our superhighways! 138 HUBBARD'S FOLLY ~ 1835 CORNER OF LA SALLE STREET AND WACKER DRIVE (Marker ■— « north side of Wacfeer Drive, first pylon west of State Street) IN 1818 GURDON SALTONSTALL HUBBARD CAME TO CHICAGO ^ that was not his folly. He was only sixteen years old at the time, but already he was started on a life of adventure and ad- vancement as a trusted employee of the American Fur Com- pany in its bold trade war upon the older and more powerful British Hudson's Bay Company. Perhaps not even John Kinzie had as full and eventful a life as had Gurdon S. Hubbard, nor one of more importance to the future of Chicago, but Hubbard had the advantage of time and opportunity to exercise his energy and will on an already blazed trail. Gurdon was born in Windsor, Vermont, in 1802, and in 1815 he began life as a trader on his own ^ then only a boy of thirteen ^ making his living and also helping his not very prosperous parents. When he was sixteen he bound himself for five years for the sum of $120 per year to an agent of the American Fur Company, leaving Montreal with this agent for the wilds of the great Northwest in September of 1818. He was sent with the "Illinois Brigade," consisting of one hundred men, who went by way of Lake Michigan, with a full stock of supplies for trade with the Indians. On the first of November young Gurdon climbed a tree at "Cottage Grove," present Cottage Grove Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street, where he got his first view of Fort Dearborn and of the settlement consisting of only 139 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES a few cabins. He was to see that place grow to a city of more than a half million population. The party remained near the Fort for three days and then pushed on toward central Illinois, going over the portage and through Mud Lake. From dawn to dusk they pushed their bateaux through the slough, and in camp it took hours to clean bloodsuckers from their bodies. Hubbard was left at a post on Bureau River, and it was here that he had one of many adventures with the Indians *— and one that might have ended his life. A hostile Indian taunted Hubbard for being an American. Adding insult to injury, the Indian took from his belt several scalps which he said had been seized from Americans in raids and in battles. First urinat- ing upon them, he shook them so that they sprinkled Hubbard in the face. In a moment all fear left the boy, and, taking a rifle, he fired point-blank at the Indian. At the moment in which Hubbard fired, a companion struck up the gun, and before further harm could be done both Hub- bard and the Indian were securely held. However, it took considerable argument by De Champs, Gurdon's boss, to pre- vent a serious aftermath to the affair, as both Indians and whites were incensed. After trading with the Indians, Hubbard returned with part of the battalion over the same route by which he had come down, the bateaux now laden with furs. In 1821 he again visited Chicago, on his way to Beardstown on the Illinois River, and after that he passed through Chicago many times, taking his furs there for shipment to Mackinac or Montreal. As a consequence, every Indian and every white person in this part of the country knew Che-mo-co-man-ess, his Indian name, meaning The Swift Walker. The name 140 HUBBARD'S FOLLY ~ 1835 was given Kim for his speed and energy. It is said that he would travel on foot seventy-five miles a day. He was in the employ of the American Fur Company until 1827, and although his pay had been only $120 per year, ex- cep" the last two years, when it was $1 ,300 as a special partner, he had accumulated a little money and laid plans for an im- mense trade on his own all along the line of what was later to te called Hubbard's Trail, starting at State and Madison, to Danville, and extending to the mouth of the Wabash River. One of his first innovations was to discontinue transport by the uncertain method of canoes, instead buying fifty pack ponies from Big Foot at Lake Geneva, thereby being able to avoid the difficult Mud Lake and to ship by land direct to and from the Indian villages. Danville for several years was his headquarters, but he was often in Chicago, and it happened that he was here at the time of the outbreak of the Winnebago War, when he made his memorable ride from Chicago to Dan- ville for help. He started between four and five in the afternoon, reaching the Iroquois River at midnight. Here he changed horses and went on. It was a dark, rainy night, and on reaching Sugar Creek he found the stream swollen and over its banks. Wlien his horse refused to cross he was obliged to wait until daylight. In the morning, he swam the stream and went on, reaching Danville at noon. The alarm was given and a call made for volunteers. At an appointed time and place one hundred men were organized into a company. They started for Chicago, camping at night on the Vermil- lion River. It rained continually, and they were obliged to swim most of the streams, but they still pushed on, reaching Fort Dearborn on the seventh day after Hubbard's departure >— to 141 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES the great joy of the waiting people. However, the company was soon disbanded, the Winnebagoes making peace, and the volunteers returned to their homes. With the treaty of 1833 *-* the last land in Illinois ceded hy the Indians #— » Hubbard knew that his trading days with the Indians were ended, and from then on he became a permanent settler in Chicago, transferring all his energy to the develop- ment of the town. But there is one more story of his trading days that must be told. This has to do with the town of Watseka, Illinois, sixty miles south of Chicago, and with a gentle Indian maid of the same name. Competition was keen in the Indian trade, and often traders made marital connections with a tribe or band of Indians in order to get an advantage. In accord with this practice, Hub- bard made agreement with the chief of a Kankakee band of Potawatomis to take one of the tribe's maidens as his wife. The chief, Tamin, wanted his own grown daughter to be Hubbard's choice, but this did not suit Hubbard. Instead, he chose Tamin's niece, Watseka, then a child of ten years, and a pledge was given that when the girl was fifteen he would marry her. Hubbard was then a young man, and when the five years had passed, Watseka's mother took the girl to him; and they were married according to Indian custom. Over this union, as over the life of Watseka, hovers much pathos and tragedy. Watseka was a beautiful and intelligent girl, and Hubbard in after years testified to the ideal character of his marriage with her. The union, however, lasted only two years, during which a daughter was born to them, dying shortly after birth. When Hubbard quit his Indian trading he severed his rela- 142 HUBBARD'S FOLLY ~ 1835 tionship with Watseka, and he and the girl separated in per- fect friendship. It must have been a separation that entailed grief for both of them, for there seems to have been love in com- mon. Did the Indian girl know that she would not fit into the life of her husband in his civilized world, or did he fear that together they would both be unhappy in the life which he had planned for himself in the booming town of Chicago? Some time after the separation she married another, with whom she had several children, after which she was again de- serted. Still a young woman, Watseka joined the Potawato- mis in Kansas. How she fared there is not known, but in 1863 she made the long journey, alone and on foot, back to her childhood home to brood by the graves of her kinfolk i-* an old woman, still dreaming of her youth and of her white lover. The connection of Mr. Hubbard with the history of Chicago since 1834 is apparent on nearly every page and in nearly every topic. He stands prominent as one of the foremost mer- chants for the succeeding twenty years, during which time, be- sides carrying on one of the largest shipping and packing trades, he held nearly every office of trust and honor that his fellow citizens could give him. It was in the boldness of enterprise that he committed his "folly" i— which was no folly. One of his first enterprises was in the slaughtering business, driving hogs and cattle from a hundred miles away to his slaughtering pens in Chicago *-* probably on open prairie. Later he built packing plants, and extended his business to shipping, running a regular fleet of brigs to lake ports. It was but natural that he should take advantage of the land and lot craze, and some of his transactions are fantastic. In 1829 he had bought 160 feet at Lake and La Salle Streets 143 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES for $66.66, part of which he sold for $80,000 in 1835. He and two other men bought 80 acres for $20,000 »— west of the North Branch, between Kinzie Street and Chicago Avenue, half of which was sold at public auction four months later for $80,000. The same year he helped organize the first bank in Chicago, located at Lake and La Salle Streets, and was made a director of it. Also in 1835 he and four others built the first brick hotel in this city, the Lake House, at Kinzie Street and Wabash Ave- nue. It was three stories in height, elegantly furnished and cost nearly $100,000. This might have been considered a "folly" for the time, but not even that is what has come down to us as "Hubbard's Folly." Hubbard was one of those who saw in the canal, talked of and worked for since before 1827, the great impetus to Chi- cago's growth >— which it has been >— and when in 1836 the first spade was struck into the earth at Canalport >-* Ashland Avenue and the South Branch *— he was one of the principal speakers. Now it is about time to write of "Hubbard's Folly." This was a brick building for packing and shipping which he put up in 1840 on the north side of Water Street *— now Wacker Drive t—> between Clark and La Salle Streets. It was of such proportions that few expected it to be a profitable venture for Gurdon S. Hubbard. But Gurdon was right *— the city grew, and grew, and grew until his "folly" was but a small cog in its great commerce ; and he lived to see the realization of his faith in the ultimate victory of hard work and co-operation in building a great city. 144 UNITED STATES LAND OFFICE - 1835 SOUTH SIDE OF LAKE STREET, BETWEEN CLARK AND DEARBORN (Marker »— east of Clark Street, on iron column) THE FIRST UNITED STATES LAND OFFICE IN CHICAGO HAD THE seemingly tremendous job of selling 3,626,536 acres of govern- ment-owned land. This was part of the land that was ceded by the Indians to the United States in the 1829 and 1833 treaties. It started selling in 1835, and by 1847 had only 735,895 acres left i— which tells a story of a land craze that has had few equals in the history of our country. Since the building of the Illinois and Michigan Canal had much to do with fostering that craze, it may be well to tie the land office and the canal together in one story. Among the measures claiming attention of the people of Il- linois in 1818, after they had state rights, was the survey of the lands obtained from the Indians for the purpose of having a canal built. In 1822 Congress granted the state permission 145 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES to cut a canal, donating of the public land ninety feet on each side, appropriating also $10,000 for the surveys. The survey was made, and the cost of construction was es- timated at a maximum of $716,110. In January, 1825, the Illinois and Michigan Canal Company was incorporated with a capital stock of $1,000,000; but nothing came of that, and the corporation was dissolved in 1826 *-> there was no money for a canal. Another and greater grant of land was requested, and in 1827 through persistent efforts of Daniel P. Cook, the con- gressman after whom our county is named, the U. S. Gov- ernment granted the state for canal purposes "a quantity of land equal to one-half of five sections in width on each side of the proposed route," which amounted to 284,000 acres. In 1829 a canal commission was appointed with power to plat town sites along the right-of-way, and to sell the granted land. They first platted Ottawa, at the junction of the Fox River and the Illinois, and a little later Chicago was laid out. One difficulty after another appeared, and for two years nothing was done toward building the canal. It had been dis- covered that it would cost over $4,000,000 i— » for a while the consummation of the project seemed hopeless. At last, however, the work got under way; nearly twenty years after the right-of-way was obtained from the Pota- watomis. On the 4th of July, 1836, Chicagoans were in a great state of excitement. They assembled in the Public Square, cannon were fired at the Fort, and a procession marched down State Street to Archer Road, and on to Canalport at Ashland Ave- nue, where the ceremony attending the turning of the first spadeful of ground was to take place. At the same time, craft 146 UNTTED STATES LAND OFFICE ~ 1835 of one kind or another propelled by steam, oars, or horse on towpath, took the south branch of the river to the place of celebration. Speeches were made by Gurdon S. Hubbard and others, the Declaration of Independence was read, and ceremoniously the gr< und was broken for the canal that was to be one of the great boons to the growth of Chicago >— and also one of the incentives to a period of land speculation that came near bank- rupting the entire state of Illinois. The United States was the owner of the land, except the alternating sections granted the state of Illinois for the canal. Section nine •-* State Street to Halsted Street, Madison Street to Chicago Avenue, was "canal land," subject to sale by the canal commission, and the section adjoining *—> Madi- son Street to Roosevelt Road, State Street to Halsted Street *** was school land. Had the school board held on to that section to the present day, then the Board of Education would prob- ably have had enough income from it to more than cover the cost of present day educational facilities of the entire United States. AH titles to lots and acres were derived from the Canal Trustees or from the United States Land Office, according to whether the plots were on the canal or on government sec- tions. The land craze started before the breaking of ground for the canal. When it appeared that the canal was to be a certainty, dreams of a big city on the lake and prosperous communities along the canal, sent reason and caution flying, and a host of land speculators, who expected to find a bonanza in the "new country," came swarming to Chicago. In 1834 this immigration was so great that there was no 147 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES room for the people, and makeshift accommodations were put up for them everywhere. The hotels and boardinghouses were always full *— * and full meant two or three in one bed. The price of real estate was not long in evincing a "boom, the school section and lots in section nine being the first to start the craze. The school section was divided into blocks, and all but four of the blocks were sold at public auction for the aggregate sum of $38,865 ^ an average of $6.73 per acre. What is that section >— Madison Street to Roosevelt Road, State Street to Halsted Street >— worth today! To top this, the land was sold mostly on credit. In section nine *- north of Madison Street >—> lots were sold mainly for cash, and here the speculator reaped a harvest >—< if he got out from under in time. The legitimate demand soon absorbed the floating supply, and prices advanced rapidly. Everyone in Chicago who had time and money went into the real-estate business or real-estate speculation, just as clerk and financier went into the stock market gamble in 1928 and 1929 >— ' and with the same disastrous result for most of them. John S. Wright in his valuable book, Chicago, Past, Pres- ent and Future, gives his own experiences during the specula- tive era: "Though a mere boy I became impressed with the advantage of the Point which was the western extremity of the great lake navigation, with a certainty of its connection by canal with the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. "I began to operate in real estate in 1834, and in February went to New York and sold for $10,000 an eighty acre tract which had cost me $4,000. In 1836 I had acquired property valued over $200,000. But 1837 brought ruin to me. Every- thing went down, down, down, and by 1840 my property had all gone. One piece that had been worth $100,000 went for 148 UNITED STATES LAND OFFICE ~ 1835 $6,000; another that had been worth $12,000 went for $900; and so on/' One of the most spectacular transactions from a point of view of price fluctuation, is that involving the southeast corner of Lake and Dearborn Streets. That lot was raffled, swapped for ponies, refused for a barrel of whiskey ^- this in 1831-32-33 »—» and some years later it was sold for over a half million dollars. A lot 80 x 100 on the southwest corner of Lake and La Salle Streets was bought in 1829 for $33.33 and one on the south- west corner of Lake and South Water Streets *— now Wacker Drive i— i for the same amount ; both lots were sold with a profit of $80,000 ~ which could have been $100,000 if sold a little sooner. Early in the spring of 1835 a tract of eighty acres at Kinzie Street west of the North Branch was bought for $5,000 i— then already considered a high price for acreage. The pur- chaser went to New York, had a sketch made of the lay of the land as well as it could be done from memory, and, without any actual subdivision, sold half of the tract in small blocks at auction for the aggregate of $80,000 *— this only three months after having paid $2,500 for it. When the seller returned to Chicago and proved the truth of his profitable transaction, every individual with a garden patch imagined himself a millionaire and put up a For Sale sign on his lot, then when he had sold it at what he considered a fabulous price, he was angry with himself the next day for not having asked a higher one. By the end of 1834 the craze was in full swing, but by 1835 it was greatly increased when the Government Land Office was opened. This office issued titles to homestead or pre-emption claims on the government acres, usually at $1.25 per acre. Settlers 149 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES and speculators swarmed to the office as trie mania spread throughout the newly settled country. There were farming lands, timberlands, townsites, town lots, water lots and every variety of land claim or land title ever known to man. Often the people never saw the land they bought. Town lots were often platted without survey, wherever it was hoped that a town might eventually spring up. There are several of these claims in and near Chicago which are still owned by the heirs of the original purchaser, and many of these heirs have profited by time and development. In his very interesting book, Old Chicago Houses, John Drury writes of one. Many of us "oldsters" remember well this little farmhouse on "the ridge" at Cicero and Wellington. It stood alone on a quarter section of farmland which the Fal- coner brothers had bought from the government at $1.25 an acre. Heirs still operated this land as a farm, Mr. Drury states, when the quarter was sold in 1917 by the son of one of the original purchasers for $2,500 per acre. This son, William Falconer, died recently, being more than ninety years old, after having lived since birth on the old homestead. William was born on that land, which a few years before his birth had been bought from the United States Land Office for $200; he sold it for about $400,000! This is one of the noteworthy transactions in the land office, if for no other reason than that land worth more than $2,000 per acre was still used for farming after it had been bought for $1.25 by the father and by the uncle of the farmer. There were many interesting deals made in that land office. The one that came near starting a small riot was the Beaubien claim. Jean Baptiste Beaubien made pre-emption claim to seventy-five acres S. W. V± of section ten *-* State Street to the 150 UNITED STATES LAND OFFICE - 1835 lake, Madison Street to Kinzie Street •— contending that he had lived on them since before 1813, and though his claim was twice denied, he received a certificate of ownership from the United States Land Office in 1835. However, this certificate of ownership was later voided by the government. The seventy-five acres were on the Fort reservation, and when the government in 1839 put this reservation on the mar- ket, Beaubien's acres were, of course, included. An indignation meeting was held by the citizens, and as it was known that Beaubien desired to secure six lots in block five at the auction about to be held, it was decided that no one should bid against him for these lots. At the auction a man bid on this land, contrary to the agreement, and Beaubien was able to meet this competition to the extent of getting only one lot, for $225. Feeling ran high against the man, and the press as well as the citizens blasted him as a heartless renegade ; but his trans- action was legitimate, and there was nothing to do about get- ting the lots for Beaubien. The bubble burst almost without warning. In 1837 there was widespread drought throughout the Northwest, and busi- ness in Chicago was affected. Banks found themselves in difficulty, and when loans were called, lots and land had to be taken. This probably precipitated the deluge, and values dropped more rapidly than they had risen. Lots in Chicago that had been sold for $1,000 could find no buyers at $50. Script was issued, but this proved only delayed action of yet more difficulty; it seemed as if the state, and the people of Chicago, were doomed to absolute financial ruin. The canal project was stopped for want of money to carry on the work, and the high hopes of its making Chicago 151 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES the greatest city in the country were replaced by doubt, which stopped immigration. There were men and women here, however, in whom faith never died, and by the efforts of these, confidence of eastern capitalists was revived to the extent that they came to the res- cue and re-established a sane and sound basis of actual values and future prospects. Enormous fortunes had been swept away, but the United States Land Office was a less important instrument in that disaster. Any one buying farmland at $1.25 an acre could not go far wrong, and millions of acres had been sold to settlers for farm purposes. Many of these farmers remained on their homesteads i— « like the Falconers »— * and became the nucleus of a better Chicago. The United States Land Office on Lake Street between Clark and Dearborn Streets in 1835, later in the Saloon Build- ing, may therefore well be termed a boon i— as the canal was >— to the development of this great city, and we may give the marker on the iron column a friendly glance as we pass it, in the heart of Chicago. 152 SALOON BUILDING ~ 1836 SOUTHWEST CORNER OF LAKE AND CLARK STREETS (Marker on building at 189 N. Clark Street) THE SALOON BUILDING WAS NEVER INTENDED TO HOUSE A saloon >— as we use the word today ; it was anything tut that. It was one of the first trick buildings in Chicago, erected in 1836, and had not only the finest meeting hall in the town, hut one that was not eclipsed ty anything of the kind in the west. The huilding faced Lake Street, and was more than a hun- dred feet wide, with depth to the alley. When it was partly rebuilt and remodeled in 1842, it was three stories in height, the first floor comprising stores, the second offices, the third a hall rich in historic lore. It was devoted to public entertainment of various kinds, poli- 153 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES tical and religious meetings, concerts, traveling shows, etc. In it a few leading citizens met in 1837 for the purpose of pre- liminary action in procuring a city charter. At this meeting one of the citizens became so enthusiastic over the future of Chicago that he made the startling prediction in his talk that "a child is already born who will see this city with a population of fifty thousand." (He could have said two million without going far wrong) , but he was greeted with boos and calls of "town lots," and implications that he was merely talking to boost real-estate business. Stephen A. Douglas made his first speech in Chicago in the Saloon Building, and in 1838 he had his first debate here. The first Swedenborg Society was organized in the Saloon Building; the Unitarian Church worshipped there; the Lyceum and the first literary and debating society had their meetings there; it also held the courtroom for several years, where notable trials of the times were held; it housed the federal and county courts; the United States Land Office; the Second Presbyterian Church; Trinity Church held serv- ices there; anti-slavery meetings were held there; Young Mens Association met there in 1841, later changed to Library Asso- ciation, with W. L. Newberry presiding, and leading to the great Newberry Library now on the north side at Dearborn and Walton; Mr. Fergus printed the first of his Historical Series" in it. In fact, the Saloon Building can be said to have been the center of Chicago's civic life in the late 1830s and in thelS^s. The results of one of these activities is, as already stated, the Newberry Library. Walter L. Newberry was one of the few who bought real estate at bottom prices and held on to it 154 SALOON BUILDING ~ 1836 when others became panicky and sold out when the bubble burst, or had it taken from them by foreclosure. As a consequence, and by foresight and business ability, Walter became a wealthy man, leaving an estate when he died in 1868, valued at over four million dollars. Two years before his death he had made a will whereby one-half of his estate was to be used for the founding of a library for the use of the people, thereby continuing on a large scale what he had started in 1841 with a gift of a hundred books when he organ- ized the Young Men's Association. The association was main- tained with nominal dues, and with voluntary contributions, but it appears that Newberry was the main contributor. He was one of the delegates to the meeting in the Saloon Building in 1837 when steps were taken to have Chicago in- corporated as a city, and was active in many civic endeavors after that. He was president of the school board ; patron of the Chicago Historical Society; director of the Galena and Chi- cago Union, the first railroad out of Chicago; vice-president of Merchants' Savings and Loan Association; trustee of Illinois Charity Eye and Ear Infirmary; member of the Illinois Legisla- ture; delegate to river and harbor conventions; besides being in the real-estate business, and active in many other endeavors. His pet avocation seems to have been gathering books and sharing them with others. After the Civil War, the Chicago Library Association had hard sledding, and the great fire of 1871 put it out of business. Although Walter L. Newberry's will had left more than two million dollars for a library, it was not until 1887 that the trustees were enabled to take steps to carry out the plans of the will. Temporary quarters were found at 90 N. La Salle Street, later at 338 Ontario Street, and then a temporary building was 155 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES put up at State and Oak Streets. At last, in 1890, the New- berry Building was started, and at Walton Place and Dear- born Street it stands today as a splendid memorial to a great man who started his good work in the Saloon Building in 1837. Many notable cases were tried in the courtrooms in the Saloon Building, not least noteworthy being one over disputed land rights between the Illinois Central and the owners or lots on the lake front, in which Abraham Lincoln represented the defendant, and won the case; nor was this the only case that he handled in the building. Lincoln was frequently in Chi- cago on professional business, in earlier years counted scarcely more than a second or third-rate lawyer; but he was rated as a storyteller, and often on pleasant evenings he would sit out on the sidewalk in front of the Tremont House, surrounded by a knot of listeners. Another notable case was the Stone murder trial, resulting in the first execution in Chicago. Stone came to Chicago in 1838 with a criminal record and spent most of his time in a billiard hall at Lake and Dearborn Streets, seemingly an all- around, good-for-nothing loafer. In 1840 he was arrested for raping and murdering a farmers wife. Being brought to trial, he was found guilty and sen- tenced to be hanged. About two months after his conviction, Stone, chained and handcuffed, was escorted by two hundred mounted citizens and sixty armed militia to a spot on the lake shore three miles south of the courthouse (at Twenty-ninth Street) , where the prisoner ascended a scaffold, dressed in a loose white gown and with a white cap upon his head, as was usual in such cases at the time ; and there he paid for his crime. Many stories could be written about what happened in the 156 SALOON BUILDING ~ 1836 Saloon Building i— spectacular trials, historic meetings, famous persons who were in it, the romance of festive gatherings of the times, the birth and development of Chicago's civic and social life »— but space does not permit all that. With the rapid growth of the city came the advent of theatres, halls, churches, and courtrooms. The Saloon Build- ing, having served its day and generation, was forced from its long-held prominence before the eyes of the citizens, and soon existed only in memory, being finally torn down to make room for a building more in keeping with the times, which was de- stroyed by the great fire. The corner lot where the old Saloon Building stood is now occupied by the Clarke Building, which soon, too, will make room for a more modern structure in the never hesitating stride of our city's progress. 157 FIRST MAYOR'S HOUSE - 1836 BLOCK BOUNDED BY CASS, ONTARIO, RUSH AND ERIE STREETS (Marker -* 645 North Wabash, Avenue) IT IS DIFFICULT FOR US NOW TO VISUALIZE CHICAGO AS IT WAS in 1836, with its couple of thousand population and its scat- tered buildings on several square miles of land. However, it is almost as difficult to visualize in that period of pioneering an estate or home comparable in size, landscaping and refine- ment with any within our city today. Such was the William B. Ogden home, built in 1836 in the center of the block bounded by Cass Street /— now Wabash Avenue *— Ontario, Rush and Erie Streets. William B. Ogden was Chicago's first mayor, elected in 1837 immediately after a city charter was granted. He was a bachelor until he was seventy years old, carrying in his heart for a half century, it seems, the image of a sweetheart of his youth whom no woman could supplant until he was an old man. William came to Chicago in 1835 as representative of east- ern capitalists who were making investments in land during the land boom.'' It took him only a year to see the possibilities and prospects in the town, and in 1836 he started a business for himself, a business that is carried on today under the name of Ogden, Sheldon and Company. He was at that time thirty-one years old, and one of the finest looking men in the city. His forehead was broad and square, his mouth firm and determined, his eyes large and dark gray, his complexion ruddy, his voice clear, musical and sym- 159 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES pathetic, his figure a little above medium height, with almost perfect symmetrical form. Until his own beautiful residence on Ontario Street was built, Ogden lived at the Lake House, the great hotel far in advance of its time, at Wabash Avenue and Kinzie Street. Men such as Mr. Ogden could not but become wealthy and influential. From the time of his arrival in 1835 to his death in 1877 he was a dynamic force in almost every endeavor for progress in Chicago and the Northwest. He made miles of streets and roads, created public parks, was one of the active promoters of the canal project, worked diligently to get the Galena and Chicago Railroad started, as well as other rail- roads leading to or from Chicago, and was active and a leader in every civic effort. One of many incidents that shows his unselfishness in his work was his refusing a salary of $25,000 as receiver of the Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad, because, he said, the road could not afford to pay it. Although he was a bachelor, he decided to build himself a home, and by 1836 he must already have made some money, for he went east to have plans drawn; and his home, it is said, was the first one built in Chicago after architects' plans. It was built in the center of the block, Grecian in style, was al- most square, two stories high, the roof surmounted by an ob- servatory. W. L. Newberry's residence was directly to the east, also occupying an entire block. (The Ogden block is now occu- pied by a Cadillac sales and service building; and the New- berry block, east of it, has the Kungsholm restaurant i— for- merly the L. Hamilton McCormick residence — * on the corner of Rush and Ontario Streets) . 160 FIRST MAYOR'S HOUSE ~ 1836 The block occupied by Mr. Ogden's bouse bad a fine growth of maple, cottonwood, oak, asb, cherry, elm, birch, and hickory trees surrounding the building. The large, double house was built of wood, with a broad piazza supported by pillars, which extended across the south front. On the northeast, and extending from Rush and Erie Streets one hundred feet, was a conservatory always bright and gay with flowers, and also fruit houses consisting of a grapery and a forcing house in which he raised exotic grapes, peaches, apri- cots, and figs. A drive went around the house, and neatly kept gravel walks traversed the natural forest of noble trees, festooned with wild grape, American ivy and other wild vines; and everywhere were ornamental shrubs, climbing roses and other flowers. His flower and fruit houses were not made bright and fragrant to waste their sweetness on desert air *- he grew fruits and flowers for his friends, and especially for the sick. He early brought to his house his mother and sisters, and it is difficult to overestimate the influence of such a home in moulding the early social life of our city. In 1871 Mr. Ogden was living quietly in the east. He had built a city, and had helped to create an empire in the North- west »— he had earned a rest *-* but on October 8th the startling news came to him over the wires : "AH Chicago is on fire," and on Tuesday, the 1 Oth, he reached the smoking ruins of the city. Coming in on the Fort Wayne Road, he had to traverse the track of the flames, and he saw public buildings, churches, banks, hotels, stores, warehouses, offices, homes in ruins. Ev- erything was gone, but he had been informed that his own house was the only one on the north side which had escaped. Crossing the river, he drove to Ontario Street, eagerly seek- 161 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES ing his home, but he found only smoking rubble. Every building from the river to Lincoln Park was gone *-* all except his brother Mahlons house. As he approached the house, he was stopped by a guard on duty; looters had threatened to set fere to this lone survivor in order to get a chance at its supposed valuable contents. The following day Mr. Ogden received word of yet another tragedy —• the burning of his great lumber establishment at Peshtigo, where a fortune was swept away and several lives lost. The Ogden house in 1836 was on the very outskirts of town. Beyond it was wide open country, with a farm house here and there, and country roads winding where now are the diagonal streets of Clark Street, Lincoln, Clybourn and Elston Avenues. Those of us who fifty years ago saw dairy farms only four miles from the Loop have seen our city's phenomenal growth, but for the younger generation it must be a little diffi- cult to believe that a grandfather of one of them may have been a visitor in the Ogden house when it stood in the out- skirts of Chicago >— at Rush and Ontario Streets. 162 GREEN BAY ROAD (Marker on parapet rail on Michigan Avenue bridge, north of the bridge house) GREEN BAY ROAD WAS A POPULAR ROUTE TO POINTS NORTH along Lake Michigan before multi-laned Skokie Highway was built, but few of those who take it in preference to Sheridan Road farther east know that they are traveling on an Indian trail that was marked centuries before the first house was built on the site of Chicago. When Fort Dearborn was built in 1803 there were trails leading in all directions from the mouth of the Chicago River »— and to the north ran Green Bay Trail. Starting at present Michigan Avenue bridge, it ran northwest to present Clark and Diversey Streets, sometimes on present street lines and sometimes winding across ground that is now occupied by buildings. There may be persons still living who saw the trail as a winding road. From North Avenue the trail followed present Clark Street to Diversey Avenue. Here there was an Indian village, and here the trail forked, one arm branching out over what now is Broadway, the other continuing on Clark Street. At Clark Street and Devon Avenue the two branches joined at another Indian village, and then as a single trail they con- tinued north on what is now Ridge Boulevard through Evanston, north of which they followed the present Green Bay Road, more or less closely, to Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 1803 it was only what its name implied >-* a trail made by the customary single file trek of Indians, marked here and there with bent trees to point direction to other trails and to vil- 163 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES Iages; but later it became a wagon road, forerunner of our present high-speed highway. The first regular white travelers over the trail, except for an occasional fur trader or missionary, were the mail carriers who carried mail from and to Chicago and Green Bay (Fort Howard) , taking a month to make the round trip. They were typical frontiersmen, hardy and bold, dressed in buckskin and fur, and with powder horn and long-barreled musket. A good part of the trail was through forest and over streams that had to be forded or swum unless they were frozen. Occa- sionally the carriers camped and got food in an Indian village, otherwise making camp in the open. They carried parched corn for an emergency, but usually found enough game to keep themselves in food if no village was reached. The hardships encountered in wintertime were terrific. On one occasion a carrier had his feet frozen to the extent that amputation was deemed necessary to save his life. This was in 1832, and the amputation was made in the old Kinzie house, then about to fall down. Dr. Harmon, assisted by his brother, tied the unfortunate man to a chair, and removed the feet —< without anesthetics. The federal government began making a road of the trail in 1832. Stakes were driven, and as far as Milwaukee the road was "somewhat improved" by cutting out the trees to a width of two rods and laying puncheons and log bridges over the impassable streams. It does not seem to have been a good road at that, because a traveler reported in 1834 that he fol- lowed the Indian trail from Chicago to Milwaukee, and crossed twenty-four streams, "getting mired in most of them." When this happened they would carry the baggage ashore and pull 164 GREEN BAY ROAD the wagon out by hand, the horse having all he could do to get himself out. In 1838 the government appropriated $15,000 for a high- way four rods wide, banked in the middle to the width of fif- teen feet. Within this space all trees were to be cut off close to the ground *— and this can be said to be the beginning of Green Bay Road, over which farm wagons and carriages traveled in pre-automobile days and over which fast motor cars speed today. Green Bay Road or Trail was not the principal artery of travel to Chicago in the early years. The principal ones were naturally from the east, wherefrom the settlers streamed in ever-increasing numbers to the new West. Of these the one skirting the lake shore, which now is called the Dunes High- way, was by far the most important. Another main trail out of Chicago was what later was known as Vincennes Trail, or Hubbard's Trail. This trail started at present State and Madison Streets, followed State Street to Thirty-third Street, and then turned souhwest to and on Vincennes Avenue to present Blue Island, where there was an Indian village. Among other old Indian trails that have become main ar- teries in Chicago, and highways in the state of Illinois, is Lake Street going through Maywood, Elgin, Rockford and on to Galena. At Maywood and at Elgin there were good-sized Indian villages, and at Galena were lead mines, a fact known to the Indians in the Seventeenth century. Grand Avenue was an Indian trail, with a village at River Grove; Milwaukee Avenue and Elston Avenue were trails, the former with a village at Park Ridge and another at Wheel- ing, going through Half Day, Liberty ville and Gurney, as it 165 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES does today. Lincoln Avenue was a trail running to present Waukegan *— at one time called Little Fort. It is a great sensation to stand by the marker on Michigan Avenue bridge, where the Green Bay Trail started, and try to visualize Indians with tent poles dragging from a pony's sides, the mail carriers in their frontier trappings, the oxcart lumber- ing along a trail on which we see today all the vast gift of a century on parade. 166 DAVID KENNISON GRAVE LINCOLN PARK NEAR MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCE DAVID KENNISON IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN THE LAST survivor of the Boston Tea Party. He survived trie massacre of 1812, and died in Chicago in 1852 at the ripe old age of 115 years. What a wealth of history he must have been able to tell »— and he left but scant records! David was born in 1 736, and was at the battles of Lexing- ton, Bunker Hill, and several others during the Revolution. In 1808 he enlisted again in the regular army for a term of five years, but John Kinzies books show that he was in Chicago as early as 1804. It is almost certain that he took part in the desperate fight 167 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES near Fort Dearborn in 1812, because bis name appears on tbe muster roll of May in tbat year, altbougb no mention is made of bim in any account of tbe battle or of tbe survivors. He must, therefore, bave been one of tbe survivors wbo came back from captivity without publicity of any kind, probably having escaped from bis Indian captors. Too bad be hasn't left a record of bis experiences. After tbe War of 1812, be seems to bave roamed about quite a bit, but not near Cbicago. He was less fortunate in escaping injury in peace tban be was in escaping wounds in battle, as be met witb several accidents, some of tbem very serious. At one time or another bis skull was fractured, his collarbone was broken, both legs were broken, and he was kicked by a horse, which left a disfigurement on his forehead, but notwithstanding bis injuries he was married four times and was the father of twenty-four children. In 1845 he came back to Chicago. With a pension of eight dollars per month and with what he could get for odd jobs, be eked out a meager living »— he was then 109 years old. In 1848 he seems to have been unable to make ends meet in his usual way, because there appeared an advertisement in a local paper as follows: "I have taken the museum in this city (Mooneys at 73 Lake Street) , which I was obliged to do in order to get comfortable living, as my pension is so small it scarcely affords me life. If I live until the 1 7th of November, 1848, I shall be 1 12 years old, and I intend making a donation party on that day at the museum. I have fought several bat- tles for my country. AH I ask of the generous public is to call at the museum on the 1 7th of November, which is my birthday, and donate to me what they think I deserve." Available rec- ords do not show success or failure of the party. 168 DAVID KENNISON GRAVE The old man was designated as nominal manager of the museum, but lie was, no doubt, more of an exhibit than any- thing else, and with little pay. What a pity for one so old and of such service to his country! David Kennison, Revolutionary and 1812 War soldier, died February 24, 1852. It was fitting that such a character should receive an imposing funeral. On the day before his death, in response to a request presented in his behalf that he be saved from a potters' field, the City Council had voted that a lot and a suitable monument be provided for him in the City Cemetery (present Lincoln Park) . The funeral service was held in the Clark Street Methodist Church, and several clergymen assisted. A procession of the mayor, the councilmen, a detachment of the United States army, various military companies, bands of the city, companies of firemen, and others moved in two divisions from the church to the cemetery, to the accompaniment of cannon booming at one-minute intervals. In the early days of Chicago, when there was no indication and but little anticipation of its coming greatness, no particular spot was set apart for burial purposes, each interment being made at or near the residence of the deceased or that of his relative. The Fort had a cemetery at present Lake Street and Wa- bash Avenue and close by there was an old Indian burial place. North of the Kinzie house there were also a few graves ; but nowhere was there a regular cemetery, where lots were bought as they are today. Graves were sometimes near the bank of the river, especially on the North Branch, and when freshets washed away the soil, the rude coffins were some- times discovered, and were seen floating down the stream. 169 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES In 1835 the town trustees took steps to secure public burial grounds, and obtained sixteen acres at Wabash Avenue and Twenty-third Street, and ten acres at Chicago Avenue and Clark Street for burial use. As soon as these grounds were platted and dedicated, interments were prohibited elsewhere within the limits of the town. In 1840 the city became the owner of one hundred twenty acres north of North Avenue and east of Clark Street, the south sixty of which were laid out as a cemetery, and in 1842 the remains interred in the two former burial grounds were transferred to the new City Cemetery. The phenomenal growth of the young city made the use of this cemetery dangerous to public health, and in 1864 the City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting any further burials in these grounds. Rosehill, Graceland, Calvary and other cemeteries were then organized, and provisions were made for removal of bodies from the City Cemetery to these. In 1865 the whole tract from North Avenue to Diversey was dedicated as a public park. It had first been named Lake Park, but the name was changed to what it is today, Lincoln Park, after the great emancipator. No doubt there are still many remains under the green grass on which thousands of persons stroll and play today; there are at least two marked graves >—> the Couch crypt and the Kennison grave. The Couch Brothers, Ira and James, had a little "six by nine" tailor shop on Lake Street prior to 1836, but they became the owners of the famed Tremont House at Lake and Dear- born, which was the first brick hotel building in Chicago raised by screws to conform to the higher street level. The 170 DAVID KENNISON GRAVE cost of raising this hotel building is said to nave teen $45,000 and to have required 5,000 screws and 500 workmen for their operation. The Couch Brothers became wealthy and influential, and it seems that of all crypts, theirs was the only one against which the City Councils order of removal was void »— hence it is still standing, near the Lincoln statue. For many years the Kennison grave was unmarked and for- gotten, few knowing where it was, but in 1905 some patriotic citizens were instrumental in having it located, and upon it was placed the massive granite monument which is on it today. On this great stone i-* fittingly symbolizing the strength of the early pioneers and of the soldiers by whose courage and energy Chicago got its start —> is inscribed: "In Memory of David Kennison, the Last Survivor of the Boston Tea Party, Who Died in Chicago, February 24, 1852, Aged 115 Years, 3 Months, 17 Days, and is Buried Near this Spot. This Stone is Erected by the Sons of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the American Revolution." 171 RUMSEY SCHOOL SOUTHEAST CORNER OF DEARBORN AND MADISON STREETS (Marker on Tribune Building, Madison Street side) ONLY BY COMPARISON CAN WE DETERMINE VALUE. IN 1840 the value of the Chicago school fund, property and furniture, was $10,000 >— it is now approximately $375,000,000. In 1840 Chicago had four schools, four teachers and 317 pupils *— today it has about 416 schools, 16,000 teachers and 396,000 pupils. When the federal government had the public land surveyed under an ordinance of 1 787 it laid out townships of thirty-six sections each, and by law, section sixteen in every township was set apart for exclusive support of public schools. Section sixteen of the original township on which Fort Dearborn was 173 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES built t-* "the six miles square at the mouth of the Chicago River" *— is the one hounded by Madison, Roosevelt, State and Halsted, a quarter section of which is part of our Loop. That entire section, excepting four square blocks, was sold by the Chicago school trustees in 1835. The history of education in Chicago is as spectacular as is that of the city as a whole. The first schooling was in Fort Dearborn two years before the massacre, when Robert For- sythe, himself only thirteen years old, taught John H. Kinzie the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. After the second Fort was built in 1816, a discharged soldier acted as a sort of teacher for John Kinzie's children and three or four others in an outbuilding of Kinzie's, standing at what is now Michigan Avenue and Illinois Street. How long this "school" was continued is not known; nor is there any record of another venture in education until 1 820, when a sergeant in the Fort instructed some children. After that there is no record of any teaching until 1829, when Charles Beaubien taught his numerous brothers and sisters and his equally numerous cousins in a room "near the garrison." Then, in 1830, Stephen Forbes was hired by Jean Beaubien to teach the children of the settlement, as described in the article on "Beaubien' s Cabin." In 1832 a Mr. Watkins was hired as a teacher in a stable which was standing on the north side of the river, a little east of Clark Street. There were then twelve pupils in Chicago, and eight of these were half-breeds. In 1835 the first building specifically for school purposes was erected at Clark Street, just south of Lake Street, but this building was paid for by John S. Wright, or by his mother, who had money and wanted to spend some of it for the welfare 174 RUMSEY SCHOOL of the children of Chicago. Still there were no city schools, all being more or less private, depending on subscription and tui- tion fees, which were from two dollars to ten dollars per term or quarter. By the school law of 1833 the school commissioners were required to apportion the interest derived from each township school fund among the several teachers in the town, according to the number of their scholars residing in the township. Of the four square blocks that the trustees had not sold, one was that bounded by State, Madison, Dearborn and Monroe Streets, and in 1836 a tax was voted by the citizens to build a schoolhouse on it. Accordingly, the first city-owned school was erected on the corner of Madison and Dearborn Streets, now occupied by the Tribune Building. It was a two-story frame, facing Dearborn Street. A picture of it shows it as a cheap, two-flat building, as they were built years ago. Poorly constructed it must have been, because the school inspectors reported in 1845: "As it is known by the council, the only schoolhouse or schoolroom belonging to the city was in the first ward, and this was so old, small and dilapidated that it was sold recently by the trustees for the sum of $40, and the purchaser has no occasion to congratulate himself on account of his bargain." In 1839 the school inspectors recommended that the council lease the block on which the school building stood, dividing it into sixteen lots 49V2 x 150 feet at a rental of not less than thirty dollars per annum. This in the very center of our Loop. There were then several schools in Chicago, public, private and semi-private, in rented quarters, excepting the Rumsey School, Madison and Dearborn Streets, and the Wright School on Clark Street. 175 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES The Dearborn Sckool, built across the street from present McVickers Theatre, was considered a "folly" by many, and the mayor in his inaugural address recommended that it be sold and the money divided among the several districts, but one year after its opening there were 540 pupils, and at the end of the third year there were 864. Another of the four blocks kept by the school trustees was between Halsted Street and a continuation of Union, Madison, and Monroe Streets. In 1855 the Council decided to build a high school on this block, and chose a lot on Monroe Street, east of Halsted Street, and this old, gray Niagara limestone building is still there. The only available picture of the Rumsey School, the first city-owned school building, shows it with a split rail fence along one side of the lot, open prairie with some cows grazing, a prairie schooner drawn by oxen crossing a plank sidewalk at Dearborn Street, and some Indian wigwams in the back- ground. Today the Tribune Building rises to many stories on the corner where the Rumsey School building stood; across the street is one of our city's mammoth buildings, formerly the Boston Store; and a block east, at State and Madison Streets, is the world's busiest corner where hundreds of thousands of shoppers mingle >—> only a little more than a century after the Rumsey School stood alone on a prairie. 176 FIRST WHEAT CARGO NORTH BANK OF RIVER NEAR RUSH STREET (Marker on Wrigley Building) CHICAGO HAD NOTHING BUT FURS AND PELTRY TO EXPORT, until 1833. Up to that time there were no products of hus- bandry raised west of Lake Michigan in sufficient quantity to more than supply the wants of the resident people, and the records prior to that time show that each vessel which arrived at the port of Chicago brought passengers and provisions, but took little back. When the first merchants established them- selves in Chicago they did not look for any profit from an ex- port trade. The beginning of what is now the vast export trade and commerce of Chicago dates back to the spring of 1833, at 177 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES which time the first invoice of what might he termed the products of civilized industry was shipped from the port of Chicago to an eastern market. George W. Dole made the first shipment of beef in barrels in the spring of 1833, which is believed to be the first consignment of western products to eastern markets •— « excepting furs, peltry and hides #— ever shipped as a commercial venture from Chicago, and it was not until 1838 that Chicago exported its first invoice of wheat, which amounted to seventy-eight bushels and was shipped in bags to Buffalo by the firm of Walker & Co. The following year (1839) Messrs. Newberry and Dole commenced as ship- pers of wheat on a scale which completely overshadowed Walker in magnitude of business done. The Newberry & Dole warehouse was on the north side of the river, immediately east of where Rush Street bridge now stands, and wheat was bought from farmers' wagons and hoisted to the upper story by "Irish" power, with rope and pulley. The problem of load- ing on the brig was solved by fixing a spout in one of the upper doors and making it gradually narrow till it reached the deck, where the wheat was discharged into boxes holding four bush- els, which then were weighed and transferred into the hold of the vessel. Before 1833, when a channel was cut through the sandbar and the old mouth of the river was closed, ships could not enter the river, and whatever was transported by such had to be taken to or from the ship at anchor off the shore. After the channel was made, the first ship to come through was the schooner Illinois, a vessel of nearly 100 tons, which sailed up the river to Wolf Point on August 12, 1834. Her topmast was covered with streamers, and her canvas was spread to invite the gentle breeze ; the banks of the river were crowded, 178 FIRST WHEAT CARGO ~ 1839 and as she reached the wharf of Newberry & Dole, where she made a stop, she was greeted with loud and repeated cheers, and her decks were immediately jammed with citizens who were anxious to greet her commander with a warm and hearty welcome. After that, wharves were built along the river shore, and shipping by water to and from Chicago grew in volume by leaps and bounds. In 1837 came the steamer Illinois, owned and built by Oliver Newberry and designed for the Chicago trade. Newberry & Dole eventually acquired a fleet of ships, steam and sail, plying between Chicago, Buffalo, and other ports. Other interests, too, went into the shipping business, and in 1839 there was a ship leaving or arriving daily. Today a score or more ships are propelled daily up and down that same river, some of them great, ocean-going vessels, carrying hundreds of thousands of tons of freight. Well may they salute in passing the site of the first warehouse that was the means of beginning their great contribution to the com- merce of a great city *-< the Newberry & Dole warehouse that stood where now the great gleaming Wrigley Building stands as a token of a city beautiful. 179 FIRST CATTLE MARKET MADISON STREET AND OGDEN AVENUE (Marker on Flat Iron Building) STATISTICS ARE INTERESTING, BUT RATHER DRY READING. WE could dig up some startling figures of comparison of the Union Stockyards of today with the first stockyard in Chicago; but the reader may see the thousand-acre yard of today for him- self, and we shall hut say that the "Bulls Head" yard at Madi- son and Ogden consisted of but a few pens on a few acres, and that near it was the Bull's Head Hotel for accommodation of the cattlemen who drove cattle in from a hundred miles around. There is not much to tell about Bull's Head Market, nor about the hotel. They were "out on the prairie, with not an- other house in sight, away from the city," and were so far out, with no transportation from the city, that from the start there was great dissatisfaction with the location. The Bull's Head Hotel, which stood on the corner of Madi- son Street and Ogden Avenue, was a three-story "balloon frame" of large dimensions. It stood for many years by itself on what was then open prairie, and was eventually taken down to make room for the Washington Home Building. Since there is so little to say about Bull's Head, we shall tell a story about Archibald Clybourn, who may well be termed the father of the butchering business in Chicago, be- cause he built the first house used exclusively for slaughtering in what is now the greatest packing city in the world. There had been slaughtering before that, done on the open prairie 181 HISTORIC CHICAGO SITES or in some makeshift outhouse, but in 1827 Archibald built the first slaughterhouse, on the north branch of the Chicago River, near what is now Armitage Avenue. It was a small log cabin; but later a larger frame building was put up near it to accom- modate Archibald's fast-growing business of supplying meat for the garrison at the Fort and for the people of the settlement and town of Chicago. When the Black Hawk War, in 1832, brought frightened settlers from the country to the shelter of the Fort, the Clybourns, and John Noble and sons, supplied meat to nearly the entire population of northern Illinois. Shortly after this he began packing for outside markets «— amassing a fortune in a few years. Archibald Clybourn was a son of Elizabeth, one of the cap- tives, who married Jonas Clybourn in Virginia. He reached Chicago in August, 1823, and after remaining about one year returned to Virginia to fetch his father and mother to the place he determined to make his home. They and his two brothers arrived in Chicago on the 23rd of August, 1824, building themselves two cabins on the North Branch. On the 10th of June, 1829, Archibald Clybourn was married to Mary Gallaway. On the 14th of June they went to their home on the north branch of the river, at Clybourn Place, now Armitage Avenue. In 1836 Archibald erected a new building of brick, and quite spacious, which in 1877 was de- scribed as "a veritable patriarch among its surroundings, but strangely misplaced." It contained about twenty rooms, but when it was built there was neither street nor landmark to de- termine how the structure should face, and by a freak of the surveyor, or other cause, the building stood in the middle of the lot, the front facing an adjoining lot instead of the street. Archibald Clybourn was the first constable of Chicago 182 FIRST CATTLE MARKET ~ 1848 when it was a precinct of Peoria County. In 1 829 he was ap- pointed one of the first trustees of the school section, and in 1831 was made justice of the peace. Mr. Clybourns record as an old pioneer is unclouded by any of the prevalent vices of the time. He lived the life of an unselfish and guileless man, and went to his rest full of years and not lacking the full measure of honors that honesty and a broad charity for his fellowmen could bring. In his religious faith he was a member of the then quite unpopular and un- evangelical sect known as Universalists. He was one of the earliest and staunchest supporters of the sect in Chicago, and, as a layman, ought to rank as one of the fathers of that church, a father to whom the many who now hold to his faith in these latter days may point with pride, and whose memory may well be cherished by them with enduring affection. Archibald was not alone in the business of slaughtering. As the years passed, Gurdon Hubbard, George Dole, Mark Noble and several others drove cattle from farming districts many miles from Chicago and had slaughtering houses in va- rious places in the city. However, the Clybourns were be- ginners in a business that today makes Chicago the packing center of the country. There is a marker at Madison Street and Ogden Avenue to indicate where Bull's Head yard was located in 1848, but surely there should be markers at the river near Armitage Ave- nue, formerly Clybourn Place, to give credit to the Clybourns for their real beginning of Chicago's present great slaughtering business. 183 FINIS It is difficult for us of today to visualize Chicago as it was in our grandfathers* time. It was incorporated as a city in 1837 with 4,179 inhabitants; today it has a population of more than three and one-half million *-> the swiftest growth of any metropolis in history. Hotels, industry and commerce, schools, churches, and canals have grown out of a rich energy, an unbridled ambition, a spiritual fervor that is dominant today and will carry Chicago on to yet undreamed of heights. 185 V i l>°?