History of Chicago. From the earliest period to the present time, Part 25

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 1340

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At a meeting of the Chicago Historical Society, July II, 1877, Hon. I. N. Arnold, President of the Society, read the following sketch of the late Colonel John H. Kinzie, eldest son of John and Eleanor Kinzie, which he received from Mrs. Nellie (Kinzie) Gordon, daughter of John H. Kinzie, and which was written by the late Mrs. Juliette A. Kinzie, his wife :

JOHN H. KINZIE was born at Sandwich, U. C., on the 7th of July, 1803. It was not by design that his birthplace was in the British Dominions, for his mother was patriotic beyond most of her sex ; but having crossed the river from Detroit, the place of her temporary sojourn, to pass the day with her sister, Mrs. William Forsyth, it so happened that before evening her eldest son drew his first breath on a foreign soil. While still an infant he was carried in an Indian cradle, on the shoulders of a French engage, to their home, at what is now the town of Bartrand on the St. Joseph River, in Michigan. At one of their encampments, on the journey, he made a narrow escape with his life, owing to the carelessness of his bearer in placing him against a tree in the immediate proximity of a blazing fire. A spark escaping, lodged in the neck of his dress, causing a fearful burn, of which he carried the mark ever after. Ilis father having purchased the trading establishment of Mons. LeMai, at the mouth of the Chicago River, removed with his family to the place on the following year. Some companies of infantry, under command of Major John Whistler, arrived at the Mille time-4th of July-and commenced the construction of Fort Dearborn. At his home, on the banks of the river, nearly opposite the furt, the childhood of Mr. Kinzie was passed. until the break- ing out of the War of t812. The frontier at that time afforded no in Sitt for education. What children contrived to scramble into must be acquired under the paternal roof. Mr. Kinzie loved to describe his delight upon one occasion, when on the opening of a chest of tra, among the stores brought by the annual schooner, a spelling-book was drawn forth and presented to him. His cousin, Robert For-eth, at that time a member of his father's family, auder- took to teach him to read, and, although there seems to have been but little patience and forbearance on the part of the young peda-

gogue to sweeten the task of learning, the exercises gave to the pupil a pleasant association with the fragrance of green tea, which always kept that spelling-book fresh in his mind. A discharged soldier was upon one occasion engaged to take charge of him, along with the officer's children, but the teacher's habits of drunkenness and irregularity caused the school to be discontinued in less than three months. His best friend in these days was Washington Whistler, a son of the commanding officer, in after years a distin- guished civil engineer in his own country, and in the service of the Emperor of Russia, At the time of the massacre in 1812, Kinzie was nine years of age. He preserved a distinct recollection of all the particulars that came uoder his own observation. The discip- line of these thrilling events doubtless helped to form in him that fearlessness as well as that self-control which characterized his manly years. The circumstances of the massacre are familiar to all. When the troops left the garrison, some friendly chiefs, know- ing what was in contemplation by their young men, who would not be restrained, took possession of the boat in which was Mrs Kinzie and her children, and guarded them safely till the fighting was over.

They were the next day escorted by the Chief " Robinson," and other friends, in their boat, to the St. Joseph Kiver, to the home of Mme. Bertrand, a sister of the famous Chief To-pee-nee-bee-haw. whence, after a short sojourn, they were carried to Detroit, and de- livered as prisoners of war to the British commanding officer, Colonel Mckee. The family, after the father rejoined them in the following winter, were established in the old family mansion, on the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Wayne Street, Detroit. One of the saddest features of the ensuing winter was the spectacie of the suffering of the American prisoners, who were from time to tine brought into headquarters by their Indian captors. The ten- derness of feeling, which was a distinguishing trait in the subject of this sketch, made himever foremost in his efforts to bargain with the savages for the ransom of the sufferers, and many were thus rescued, and nursed, and cared for-sometimes to the salvation of their lives, though too often to merely a mitigation of the tortures they had undergone. Mr. Kinzie, Sr., had been paroled by General l'roctor, but upon a suspicion that he was in correspondence with General Harrison, who was known to be meditating an attempt to recover the city of Detroit, he was seized and sent a prisuner to C'anada, leaving his wife and young family to be cared for as they might, until. after the lapse of some months, the capture of the place by General Harrison secured them a fast friend in that noble

HISTORY OF EARLY CHICAGO.

and excellent man. The father was at length released and restored to his family, with one solitary shilling in his pocket. That little coin has always been carefully preserved by his descendants, as a memento of those troublous times. It so happened that in Detroit,

MOSSE

Julietta A. Angie.

as upon more remote frontiers, the advantages of education were extremely limited. The war had disarranged everything. During the four years' sojourn of the family in this place the children had occasional opportunities of beginning at a school which promised well, but which, as a general rule, was discontinued at the end of the first quarter. Amid such unpropitious circumstances were the rising generation at that day obliged to acquire what degree of learning they found it possible to attain.

In 1816, the Kinzie family returned to their desolated home in Chicago. The bones of the murdered soldiers, who had fallen four years before, were still lying unburied where they had fallen. The troops whorebuilt the fort collected and interred these remains. The coffins which contained them were deposited near the bank of the river, which then had its outlet about at the foot of Madison Street. The cutting through the sand-bar for the harbor caused the lake to encroach and wash away the earth, exposing the long range of coffins and their contents, which were afterwards cared for and reinterred by the civil authorities. In the year ISIS, when he was in his sixteenth year, Colonel Kinzie was taken by his father to Mackinaw, to be indentured to the .Vierican Fur Company, and placed under the care of Ramsey Crooks, " to learn," as the articles express it, " the art and mystery of merchandising in all its various parts and hranches." This engagement was for five years, during which time he was never off the island, except upon one occasion, when he was taken by Robert Stewart, who succeeded Mr. Crooks at the head of the company, to visit the British officers at Drummond Island. IIe was never during this period at an evening entertainment, never saw " a show." except one representation by an indifferent com- pany, who had strayed up the lakes, of some pantomimes and tricks of sleight-of-hand. His days were passed from five o'clock in the morning till tea-time, in the warehouse or in superintending the numerous engages, making up outfits for the Indian trade, or re- ceiving the packs and commodities which arrived from time to time. In the evening, he read aloud to his Lind and excellent friend, Mrs. Stewart, who was unwearied in her efforts to supply the deficiencies

which his unsettled and eventful life had made inevitable. To her explanations and judicious criticisms upon the books he read, and her patience in imparting knowledge from her own well-stored mind, he was indebted for the ambition which surmounted early disad- vantages, and made him the equal of many whose youthful years have been trained in schools. MIr. Stewart was a severe disciplin- arian. He believed that the surest way to make of a clerk a syste- matic and methodical man of business was never to overlook the slightest departure from the prescribed routine of duty. Upon one occasion, young Kinzie, out of patience with the slow-dragging movements of a party of his employés, who were engaged in haul- ing wood in sledges across the straits from Bois Blank Island, took the reins from the hands of one, and drove across and returned with his load, to show the men how much more they could have accomplished if they had made the effort. Mr. Stewart's commen- dation was, " Ah, you have changed your occupation for that of hauling wood. have you ! Very well, you can continue it ; "and. as the young man was too proud to ask to be relieved, he actually drove the sledge and brought wood through the bitter winter till the ice gave way in May. His chief recreations throughout this period were trapping silver-gray foxes during any chance leisure hour in the winter, and learning to play on the violin, his instruct- ress being a half-breed woman. In 1824, being still in the employ of the Fur Company, he was transferred from Mackinaw to Prairie du Chien. He had made a visit to his parents on attaining his ma- jority, and had returned to Mackinaw in a small boat, coasting the western shore of Lake Michigan. He was the first white man who set foot on shore at Wau-kee-gan-at least since the days of the explorers. While at Prairie du Chien, Mr. Kinzie learned the Winnebago language, and compiled a grammar, as far as such a task was practicable. The Ottawa, Pottawatomie, and Chippewa dialects he had been familiar with from his childhood. He also learned the Sioux language, and partially that of the Sauks and Foxes. About this time, Colonel Kinzie received an invitation from General Cass, then Governor of the Territory of Michigan, to become his private secretary, and in 1826, he escorted a depu- tation of Winnebagoes to Washington to visit their Great Father, the President. He was at the Treaty of "' Butte des Morts " in the summer of 1827, and accompanied the Commissioner, Colonel Mc- Kenny, to the Portage of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, to be present at the surrender of the " Red-Bird," a Winnebago chief, who, with his comrades, had been concerned in the murder of the Gaznier family at Prairie du Chien, Mr. Kinzie took a different view of the actual complicity of Red-Bird from what has been given to the public. His journal, kept at the time, is of great interest. He was called from his station, beside the military officer appointed to receive the prisoners, by Kau-ray-man-nee, the principal chief of the nation, to stand beside him, and listen to what was said on both sides at this interview, and tell him whether his speech to the " Big Knives " and their reply to him were rightly interpreted. During the time of his residence with General Cass, who was by virtue of his appointment, also superintendent of the Northern Division of the Indian Tribes, he was sent to the vicinity of San- dusky, to learn the language of the Wyandots, or Hurons, their manners and customs, legends, traditions, etc. Of this language he also compiled a grammar. The large amount of Indian lore which he collected in these various researches, was, of course, placed in the hands of his chief, General Cass ; and it is greatly to be regretted that as far as can be ascertained not a trace of it now remains extant. Mr. Kinzie rceived the appointment of Agent for the upper bands of the Winnebagoes in 1829, and fixed hisresidence at the portage, where Fort Winnebago was in that year constructed. In 1830 he married, and continued to reside among his red-chil- dren-to whom he was, and is still proclaimed by the oppressed few who remain, a kind, judicious, and watchful " father." In 1833 the Kinzie family, having established their pre-emption to the quarter section upon which the family mansion had stood since 1804. Colonel Kinzie (such was then his title as aid to the Commander-in- Chief, (Governor Cass,) came with his brother in-law, General Hun- ter, to Chicago, and together they laid out that part of the town since known as Kinzie's Addition. In 1834 he brought his family to Chicago to reside. He was first President of the village, when a prediction of the present opulenceand prosperity of the city would have seemed the wildest chimera. He was appointed Collector of Tolls on the canal immediately on its completion. In IS41 he was made Registrar of Public Lands by General Harrison, but was re- moved by Tyler when he laid aside the mask under which he gained the nomination for Vice-President. In 1849, General Taylor con- ferred upon him the appointment of Receiver of Public Moneysand Depositary. His office of Collector he held until commissioned by President Lincoln as P'avmaster in the '-my, io 1861. The latter appointment he held until the close of the War. Ilis labors were vast and wearying, for he had the supervision of Michigan, Wis. consin, and Illinois ; yet he was too conscientious, in the state of the public finances, to apply for more aid. During the four years

THE FUR TRADE AND TRADERS.

he discharged this large amount of duty with the assistance of but a solitary clerk. It was too much for him ; his health gave way. When a tardy leave of absence arrived, he sei out with his family upon a journey, in hopes that mountain air or sea-bathing would recruit his exhausted forces. But he was destined to reach hardly the first stage of his journey. While riding in the cars approaching Pittsburgh, and conversing with his ordinary cheerfulness, he re- marked a blind man approaching, and, perceiving that he was ask- ing alms, he characteristically put his hand in his pocket. In the act, his head drooped gently, and with a peaceful sigh, his spirit departed to its rest.

Colonel Kinzie married, in Middletown, Conn., August 9, IS30, Miss Juliette A. Magill, daughter of Arthur Magill of that place. He was at that time Indian Agent at Fort Winnebago, and the young couple, after a brief visit in New York, sct out for their home in the western wilderness. In the latter part of September they arrived at Detroit, and took passage on the steamer " Henry Clay," for Green Bay, via Mackinaw. Arriving there they passed down the Fox River to the Portage and Fort Winnebago. Colonel Kinzie visited Chicago in the fall of 1630, at the time of Dr. Wol- cott's death, and again in the spring of 1831, the latter time ac- companied by his wife. The family came to Chicago to reside in 1834. St. James' parish was organized the same year, and on the 12th of October Rev. Isaac W. Hallam arrived in the place to take charge of it. Mr. and Mrs. John H. Kinzie were from the first most influential and devoted members of St. James' Church, and with Gurdon S. Hubbard and Mrs. Margaret Helm may be con- sidered its founders. The first regular services of the Church were heid in a room in a wooden building standing on the corner of Wolcott (now North State) and Kinzie streets, which was fitted up by Mr. Kinzie, and the lots on the southeast corner of Cass and Illinois streets, where a church edifice of brick was erected io 1836-37, were donated by him. The home of Mr. and Mrs. Kin- zie was on the northeast corner of Cass and Michigan streets, and the generous hospitality of both host and hostess was proverbial. Mr. Kinzie left a widow, one son and two daughters: His eldest son (born at Fort Winnebago) was killed in an engagement at White River, in the summer of 1862, and he had also buried a daughter. Mrs. Juliette A. Kinzie died September 15, 1870, at Amagansett, L. S. Her death was caused by the fatal mistake of . a druggist, who sent her morphine, which she unfortunately swal- lowed instead of quinine, which she had ordered.

ELLEN MARION KINZIE, eldest daughter of John and Eleanor, was born in the "Kinzie Flouse," in December, 1804, and was probably the first white child born in Chicago. During the resi- dence of the family in Detroit she attended school at that place, and afterward at Middletown, Ct. On July 20, 1823, she was married to Dr. Alexander Wolcott, then Indian Agent at Chicago. Her husband died at the agency-house in IS30, and the following year with her sister, MIrs. Hunter. she accompanied the troops, theo vacating Fort Dearborn, to Fort Howard, Green Bay. In 1836 she married, at Detroit, Mich., Hon. George C. Bates of that city. Mrs. Bates died at Detroit, August 1, IS60, at the resi- dence of Bishop McCoskey, leaving a husband and one son, Kin- zie Bates.

MARIA I. KINZIE was born in 1807, and married Lieuten- ant David Hunter (now General), when he was stationed at Fort Dearborn, accompanying him in 1831 to Green Bay. The following is an extract from a letter of General Hunter, dated May 24, 1879, and published in the Calumet Club Reception Pampblet :

." More than half a century since, I first came to Chicago on horseback from St. Louis, stopping on the way at the log cabins of the early settlers, and passing the last house at the mouth of the Fox River. I was married in Chicago, having to send a soldier one hundred and sixty miles, on foot, to Peoria for a li- cense. The northern counties in the State had not then been or- ganized, and were all attached to Peoria County. My dear wife is still alive, and in good health ; and I can certify, a hundred times over, that Chicago is a first rate place from which to get a good wife."

ROBERT ALLEN KINZIE was born in Chicago, February S, 1810. Although but two and a half years of age at the time the family escaped the Fort Dearborn massacre, its horrid scenes were indelibly imprinted on his memory-even to minor details. Ile re- turned with the family to Chicago in IS16, and when about nine years of age accompanied his father on a trip to St. Louis. Hle was sent to Detroit to attend school, going by way of the lakes, and returning on horseback. In 1825 he went to Prairie du Chien and took a position there under his brother John II., who was chief clerk for the American Fur Company, afterward taking his brother's position when the latter was appointed agent of the company. In 1827 he returned to Chicago, and the following year went to De- troit. In 1829 his brother John removed to Fort Winnebago as Indian Agent, and Kobert went to that place, where he was em-

ployed as sutler to the fort. Mrs. Kinzie mentions in, " Waubun," the fact of his being there when she arrived in the fall of IS30, and he probably accompanied his brother to Chicago a few weeks later on receiving intelligence of the alarming sickness of Dr. Wolcott, his sister's husband. He remained in Chicago when the rest of the family left in the spring of IS31, and early in 1832 erected a frame store on the West Side-the first frame store in Chicago- and probably the first frame building, aside from the one erected by Government for Billy Caldwell in' IS2S. near the junction of North State and Chicago Avenue. Mr. Kinzie married the daugh- ter of Colonel Wm. Whistler, who came to Chicago as Lieutenant in his father's command in 1803, and returned to the place as com- mandant at Fort Dearborn in IS32. In 1835 Mr. Kinzie became a member of the firm of Kinzie. Davis & Hyde, hardware dealers ; in IS40 he moved on to a farm at Walnut Grove, Illinois, where he remained three years. In 1845 he was at Des Moines, and thence went beyond the Missouri River in Kansas to trade with the In- dians. In May, IS61, he was appointed Paymaster in the army, with the rank of Major, and remained in the service to the time of his death. From 1861 to 1864, he was in Washington, D. C. ;

R.A. Minge

from 1864 to 1868 in New Mexico and afterward in Chicago. In person, Major Kinzie was a very powerful, as well as active man. His death was from heart disease, and very sudden. He seemed quite as well as usual in the morning, but later in the day suddenly became ill, and died in a few moments, at his residence on Thirty- fifth Street. Chicago, on Saturday afternoon, December 13. 1873. The funeral services were conducted by Father Riordan, at St. James' Roman Catholic Church : the interment was in Graceland Cemetery. It has been written of Robert A. Kinzie : "He was a man of sterling character and honesty. While his life presented no brilliant succession of great deeds, he was a man who would be remembered as . Good Major kinzie.'"*

* For many of the faite in relation to the youngest son of John and Eleanor Kinzie credit is here given to Hurlbut's " Chicago Antiquities.'

100

HISTORY OF EARLY CHICAGO.

CHICAGO FROM 1816 TO 1830.

From 1816, when Fort Dearborn was rebuilt, to 1829-30 there was little change in the outward appear- ance of Chicago, Samuel A. Storrow, of Massachusetts, Judge-Advocate U. S. A., in 1816-18, made a three months' tour through the West in 1817, visiting Fort Dearborn on his route. In a letter to Major-General Brown which was published in the Wisconsin Historical Society's Collections, he says :

"On the 2d of October after walking for three or four hours, I reached the River Chicago, and after crossing it entered Fort Dearborn, where I was kindly entertained by Major Baker and the

for Fort Wayne, having provided less uncomfortable means of traveling than for the ten previous days."

When Henry R. Schoolcraft visited Chicago, in 1820. he found four or five families living here. He mentions those of John Kinzie, Dr. Alexander Wolcott, John B. Beaubien and John Crafts, the latter being then at Hardscrabble.

Two years later (1822) Charles C. 'Trowbridge made a trip from Michigan to Chicago on Government busi- ness. He found only "the little Fort Dearborn, one log house, occupied by Mr. John Kinzie, agent for Mr. Astor, another by Dr. Wolcott, United States Indian Agent, and another by the late General Beaubien, then

FORT DEARBORN, AS REBUILT IN 1816.

officers of the garrison, who received me as one arrived from the moon. At Chicago I perceived I was in a better country. It had become so by gradual amelioration. That which I had left was of a character far above mediocrity, but labors under the permanent defects of coldness of soil and want of moisture. * The

River Chicago (or, in English, Wild Onion River) is deep, and ahont forty yard, in width. Before it enters the lake, its two branches unite, the one proceeding from the north, the other one proceeding from the west, where it takes its rise in the very fountain of the Plain or Illinois, which flows in an opposite direction. The source of these two rivers illustrates the geographical phenomenon of a reservoir on the very summit of a dividing ridge. In the autumn they are both without any apparent fountain, but are formerl within a mile and a half of each other, by sime impercept- ilde undulations of the prairie, which drain it and lead to diferent directions But in the spring the space between the two is a single sheet of water, the common reservoir of both. in the center of which there is no current toward either of the opposite streams ......... The site and relations of Fort Dearborn I have already explained. It has no advantage of harbor, the river itself being always choaked and frequently barred from the site can-es that I have imputed lo the other streams of this country. In the rear of the fort is a prairie of the most complete fitness, no signs of elevation being within the range of the eve. The wel and climate are both excel- lent. Traces yet remain of the devastation and massacre com- mitted by the savage in 1-12 I - as one of the principal perpe- Im ft 4th of October 1 lett Chicago

mint famutis the test the halt in, da Bir ich ruf Hu ante of Billy Caldwell.

a trader." So it was year after year-Fort Dearborn, and the houses' of John Kinzie, Dr. Wolcott and Jean Baptiste Beaubien. William H. Keating, who reached Chicago, with the second expedition of Major Long, June 5, 1823, describes the village as " consisting of a few huts," and offering no inducements to the settler as a place of business for " the whole amount of the trade on the lake did not exceed the cargo of five or six schooners, even at the time the garrison received its supplies from Mackinaw." Ebenezer Chills, of La Crosse, made a trip from Green Bay to Chicago in 1821. and again visited the latter place in 1827. He says the place had not improved any since his former visit. John H. Fonda, of Prairie du Chien, came to Chicago in 1825. He says :

" At that time Chicago was merely an Indian Agency, it con- tained about fourteen houses, and not more than seventy-five or one nundred inhabitants at the most. An agent of the American Fur Company, named Gordon >. Hubbard, then occupied the fort. The staple business seemed to be carried on by the Indians and run-away soldiers, who hunted ducks and muskrats in the marshes. There was a great deal of les land ; and mostly destitute of tim- ber. The principal inhalte - were the [internment] Agent TDr. Wedeott]. Mr. Holland. a Frenchman by the name of Ouil- mette, and John B. Haubien."

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History of Chicago. From the earliest period to the present time, Part 25

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas Number of Pages: 1340

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 1340