USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > History of Chicago : historical and commercial statistics, sketches, facts and figures, republished from the "Daily Democratic press" ; What I remember of early Chicago, a lecture, delivered in McCormick's hall, January 23, 1876 (Tribune, January 24th) > Part 20
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21
1
119
HISTORY OF CHICAGO.
hands, for that 14 acres is now valued by James H. Reese, Esq., at $560,000, or $40,000 per acre. In that case, as in scores of others, I, too, just escaped get- ting rich ; but I have an abundance of good company, for hundreds of my fel- low-citizens have missed opportunities equally good.
Take the following instances : Walter L. Newberry bought the 40 acres that form his addition to Chicago, of Thomas Hartzell, in 1833, for $1,062. It is now valued at $1,000,000. Maj. Kings- bury had been off an exploring expedition about this time, till his pay as an army officer, above his immediate necessities, amounted to some $600. A brother officer advised him to salt this down for his two children. He bought for it 160x180 feet corner of Clark and Randolph streets, and 27 acres on the North Branch. It is now worth from $600,000 to $1,000,000. One quick at figures could probably show that at com- pound interest the cost of the land would- have realized much more than it is now worth. In time this certainly will be true ; but if the rents of the land are taken in place of the interest, let him who has time to make the figures determine which would have been the more profitable in- vestment.
NO PAVEMENTS.
I said we had no pavements in 1848. The streets were simply thrown up as country roads. In the spring for weeks portions of them would be impassable. I have at different times seen empty wag- ons and drays stuck on Lake and Water streets on every block between Wabash avenue and the river. Of course there was little or no business doing, for the people of the city could not get about much, and the people of the country could not get in to do it. As the clerks had nothing to do, they would exercise their wits by putting boards from dry goods boxes in the holes where the last dray was dug out, with significant signs, as "No Bottom Here," "The Shortest Road to China." Sometimes one board would be nailed across another, and an old hat and coat fixed on it, with the notice "On His Way to the Lower Regions." In fact, there was no end to the fun ; and jokes of the boys of that day-some were of larger growth-were without number.
Our first effort at paving, or one of the first, was to dig down Lake street to near- ly or quite on a level with the lake, and then plank it. It was supposed that the sewage would settle in the gutters and be carried off, but the experiment was a disastrous failure, for the stench at once became intolerable. The street was then filled up, and the Common Council estab-
lished a grade from 2 to 6 or 8 feet above the natural level of the soil. This re- quired the streets to be filled up, and for a year or two Chicago lived mostly on jack- screws, for the buildings had to be raised as well as the streets. Until all the sidewalks were raised to grade, people had to go up and down stairs from four to half a dozen steps two or three times in passing a single block. A Buffalo paper got off a note on us to the effect that one of her citizens going along the street was seen to run up and down every pair of cellar stairs he could find. A friend, asking after his sanity, was told that the walkist was all right, but that he had been in Chicago a week, and, in traveling our streets, had got so accustomed to going up and down stairs that he got the springhalt and could not help it.
THE COURT HOUSE SQUARE
should not be forgotten. On the north- west corner of it stood, till long after 1848, the Jail, built "of logs firmly bolted to-" gether," as the account has it. It was not half large enough to hold the Aldermen that, if standing now, ought to be in it, not to speak of the Whisky Ring, and certainly it was not strong enough to keep them there. The Court House stood on the northeast corner of the Square-a two-story building of brick, I think, with offices in the lower story. They stood there till 1853, when they were torn down to give place to the new building /com- pleted in that year.
I said we had no gas when I first came to the city. It was first turned on and the town lighted in September, 1850. Till then we had to grope on in the dark, or use lanterns. Not till 1853 or '54 did the pipes reach my house, No. 202 Michigan avenue.
But the more important element, water, and its supply to the city, have a curious history. In 1848, Lake and Water, and perhaps Randolph streets, and the cross streets between them east of the river, were supplied from logs. James H. Woodworth ran a grist-mill on the north side of Lake street near the lake, the en- gine for which also pumped the water into a wooden cistern that supplied the logs. Whenever the lake was rough thie water was excessively muddy; but in this, myself and family had no personal inter- est, for we lived outside of the water sup- ply. Wells were in most cases tabooed, for the water was bad, and we, in com- mon with perhaps a majority of our fel- low-citizens, were forced to buy our water by the bucket or the barrel from water-carts. This we did for six years. and it was not till the early part of 1854 that water was supplied to the houses from the new works upon the North Side,
120
HISTORY OF CHICAGO.
But our troubles were by no means ended. The water was pumped from the lake shore the same as in the old works, and hence, in storms, it was still excessively muddy. In the spring and early summer it was impossible to keep the young fish out of the reservoir, and it was no un- common thing to find the unwelcome fry sporting in one's wash-bowl, or dead and stuck in the faucets. And besides they would find their way into the hot-water reservoir, where they would get stewed up into a very nauseous fish chowder. The Water at such times was not only the horror of all good housewives, but it was justly thought to be very unhealthy. And, worse than all this, while at ordinary times there is a slight current on the lake shore south, and the water, though often muddy and sometimes fishy, was compar- atively good, when the wind blew strongly from the south, often for several days the current was changed, and the water from the river, made from the sewage mixed with it into an abominably filthy soup, was pumped up and distributed through the pipes alike to the poorest street gamin and to the nabobs of the city. Mind you, the summit level of the canal had not then been dug down and the lake water been turned south. The Chicago river was the source of all the most detestably filthy smells that the breezes of heaven can possibly float to disgusted olfactories. Davis' filters had an active sale, and those of us who had cisterns betook ourselves to rain-water-when filtered, about the best water one can possibly get. As Chi- cago, with all her enterprise, did not attempt to stop the south wind from blow- ing, and her filthy water had become un- endurable, it was proposed to run a tun- nel under the lake to a point two miles from the shore, where the water was always pure-one of the boldest and most valuable thoughts ever broached by a civil engineer, but our able fellow-citizen, E. S. Chesbrough, not only planned, but car- ried out the great enterprise to a successful conclusion. Ground was broken March 17, 1864 ; it was completed Dec. 6, 1866, but it was not till March 25, 1867, that the water was let in and began to be pumped into the pipes to supply the city. A few words as to the way it was constructed : In digging under the city a hard blue clay is reached at the depth of a few feet. Experiments proved that this bed of hard, compact clay extended under the lake. At the foot of Chicago avenue, where it was proposed to sink the shore end, a bed of quicksand had to be passed through. To do this, cast-iron cylinders were pro- cured, 9 feet long. The flanges by which they were to be bolted together were on the inside, so that they could sink smooth- ly through the sand. These were lowered
successfully, as the material from the in- side was taken out, till the hard pan was reached. Brick was then used. The water 2 miles from shore was 35 feet deep. In order to start that end of the tunnel an octagonal crib was built of square timber, framed and bolted firmly together, with several water-tight com- partments and a space in the centre left open sufficiently large to receive the same kind of cast-iron cylinders as were used at the shore end. The crib was nearly 100 feet in diameter, and, if I mistake not, 50 or 60 feet high. It was built in the harbor, and during a calm it was towed out 2 miles and anchored due east of Chi- cago avenue ; then scuttled, the compart- ments were filled with stones, and it was imbedded firmly into the mud at the bot- tom of the lake. The cylinders were bolted together and forced down into the hardpan, the water was pumped out and the brickwork was fairly commenced. The shore shaft was sunk 90 feet, and that at the crib 85 feet, and then workmen at each end commenced excavating and bricking up the tunnel towards each other. Of course I need not give more particu- lars, nor speak of the 4-mile tunnel to the corner of Ashland avenue and Twenty- second street, where new pumping-works are in process of erection-our works on the lake shore being found only capable of supplying the 450,000 people now said to be in the city. Chicago may well be proud of her Water-Works, for they are truly splendid, and furnish her with an abundance of as pure water as can be found in any city in the world.
We had no sewers in 1848. The first attempts were made a year or two later with oak plank, I think on Clark street. I have no time nor space for particulars, but will only add that a thorough and ef- fective system has been extended through all the more thickly settled portions of the city, and the deepening of the Illinois & Michigan Canal carries the sewage down the Illinois River, and, except when the ice covers the canal and river for many weeks, it does no damage whatever, and does not even make itself known by offen- sive odors.
Our mails from the East came by steamer from St. Joseph or New Buffalo, or by stage from the west end of the Michigan railways, till Feb. 20, 1852, when the Mich- igan Southern was opened to this city. Of course during severe storms, while navi- gation was open, and during the winter and spring, when the roads were about impassable, they were very irregular. Sometimes we would be a week or two without any news from the outside world. Our long winter evenings were employed in reading,-much more so than now,-in attending lectures and debates at the Me-
121
HISTORY OF CHICAGO.
chanics' Institute, in going to church, and in social life. Chicago people have al- ways had abundant means to employ their time fully and profitably. The post-office stood on Clark street, on the alley where the north side of the Sherman House now is. It had a single delivery window a foot square, opening into a room with a door on the alley, and another on Clark street. All the city could see the flag flying from the Sherman House, when the mail steam- er from the other side of the lake was sig- naled. Each one knew how long it would take her to reach her dock and the mails to get distributed. For a long time before the delivery window would open, the peo- ple would begin to assemble, the first taking his station at the window and the others forming in line through the rear door into the alley, often far into the street, like a long line of voters at election. Here I saw one day an incident which I mention as a tribute to one of the best and noblest of men, and as an example for all of us to follow. At one time when we had been without a mail for a week or more, I stood in the line perhaps a dozen from the window and Robert Stewart two or three ahead of me. Just as the window opened and the column began to move, a woman, poorly clad and evidently a for- eigner, rushed in at the front door, and, casting her eye down that long line of men, the muscles of her face twitched and she trembled with anxiety. She evidently expected a letter from dear ones far away over the broad Atlantic. Not a word was uttered by the crowd, and there she stood, waiting in agony for the crowd to pass by, till it came Mr. Stewart's turn, when, with a kindly wave of the hand he said, " Come here, my good woman, " and, placing her directly in front of him, she grasped her letter, and with a suppressed "thank the Lord and you sir," she left, the most happy person in the crowd. Any man might do such an act for a lady in silks; but only a noble, Christian gentle- man like Robert Stewart would do it for a poor, forlorn woman in calico.
There was not a railway entering the city from any direction in 1848. Some strap rails were laid down that fall, or during the winter following, on the Galena & Chicago, now the North-Western, and in 1850, through the personal endorsement of ex-Mayor B. W. Raymond and Capt. John B. Turner, men to whom Chicago is greatly indebted, it reached Elgin, 40 miles westward. So cheaply and honestly was it built, and from the time it was finished to Elgin, 40 miles, so large and lucrative was its business, that it paid large dividends, and demonstrated that Illinois railways could be made profitable invest- ments. It became, in fact, the parent of `the vast railway system of the West. It
was marvelous how rapidly railways were. projected in all directions, and how quick- ly they were built.
The Michigan Southern Railway -was the first great Eastern line to reach this city, which it did on the 20th of February, 1852. The Michigan Central was opened May 20th of the same year. These gave a very great impulse to the growth and prosperity of the city. These were times when the coming of great enterprises seemed to fill the air, and the men were found who were ready to grasp and exe- cute them. The necessity of binding the South and the North together by iron bands had been broached and talked of in Congress and elsewhere in 1848, and a few sagacious men had suggested the granting of alternate sections of the public lands to aid in the construction of the road as the only means by which it could be built. It had worked admirably in the case of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, and it was agreed that the importance of the work would justify a similar grant in aid of a great through line from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. With the characteristic. forecast and energy of her citizens, Chi- cago furnished the man who combined all interests and furnished the friends of the measure in Congress the means to carry it. That man was John S. Wright, who, as before stated, was one of the most far- seeing and valuable citizens Chicago ever had. The whirl and excitement in which he lived clouded his mind toward the: close of his life; but if any one among our earlier citizens deserves a monument to his memory, that man is John S. Wright. I had the same office with him in 1849, and hence know personally of what I speak. At his own expense he printed thousands of circulars, stating briefly, but with sufficient fullness, the arguments in favor of building the road, its effect upon the commerce and the social and political welfare of the Union; that in granting the lands the Government would lose nothing, as the alternate sections would at once com- mand double the price of both. To this a petition to Congress to make the grant was attached. At that time such mail matter went free to postmasters, and with a small circular asking them to interest themselves in getting signers to the peti- tions, or to put them in the hands of those who would, Mr. Wright (giving employ- ment to his clerk for weeks) sent two or three of them to every postmaster between tlie Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. In the early part of the session of 1849-'50 these petitions began to pour into Congress by the thousands, and still all through the summer of 1849 they kept coming. Mem- bers from all sections stood aghast at this deluge of public opinion that seemed about to overwhelm them, unless they at
122
HISTORY OF CHICAGO.
once passed a law making a grant of lands to the States to open a railway from Chi- cago to the Gulf of Mexico. Our Sena- tors, Douglas and Shields, and Represen- tatives, Wentworth and others, saw their opportunity, and the bill was passed on the 20th day of September, 1850. On the 10th of February, 1851, the Illinois Legis- lature chartered the company, and its construction was placed in the hands of Col. R. B. Mason. I need not add that a better selection could not possibly have been made. *
* From the Tribune, Feb. 4.
THE "PRAIRIE FARMER" AND JOHN S. WRIGHT.
The Rev. J. Ambrose Wight, writing from Bay City, Mich., under date of Feb. 1, in relation to the lecture on "Early Chicago " recently delivered in McCormick's Hall, says :
" My early Chicago is earlier. I arrived there in September, 1836, and had my headquarters there till May, 1843, when I removed there, and remained till May, 1865.
" The thing that more especially pleases me in the lecture is the tribute to my old friend, John S. Wright. If Chicago, the State of Illinois, and the old Northwest, owe anything to anybody, it is to John S. Wright. The lecture states his movement in the matter of the Central Railroad. But that was only one of his undertakings for the public good. For fifteen years he was constantly engaged in some scheme with the same end. His establishment of and success with the Prairie Farmer were things remarkable, considering his age and supposed qualifications for such a work. He had never done a day's work on a farm in his life, and presump- tively knew nothing about it. But he possessed a remarkable insight into public needs. He started his paper, freely acknowledging his own deficien- cies, but threw himself on the help of the farmers, whose acquaintance he constantly made-putting as his motto at the head of his paper, "Farmers, write for your paper.". And this flag was still fly- ing in the last copy I have seen of that journal. For ten years that paper held a place which money could never pay for, and was essential to the growth of the country where it circulated-settling, one after another, such questions as these : " Will the cultivated grasses grow on prairie lands ?" "Can sheep be kept to advantage here ?" " Can orchards be a success ?" "How shall we fence these open lands ?" and hundreds of other ques- tions of like kinds-the machinery to be used on the farm; 'the stock most profitable; and the claims of dozens of discoveries and inventions, good, and good for nothing. Mr. Wright relinquished the helm, it is true, after a year and a half, but his enthusiasm and insight gave impulse and direction, and inade it a success.
"Then the system of public schools in Illinois owes its first impulse and direction to him, though he knew no more of school-teaching than of farm- ing. He began work at that as soon as his paper was fairly launched ; set up a department in it for public-school education, corresponded and wrote unweariedly for it. There was no system of schools in the State at that time. The " common school," on the South Side, for Chicago, was kept in a story-and-a-half building, up stairs-the build- ing standing at the corner of State and Madison streets -- the pedagogue being a Mr. Bennet, I think ; and my impression is that the school was common enough. The schools over the State were just as they happened to be.
"Mr. Wright drew up asystem for the State, pub- lished it, printed circulars, got friends for it, and had it made a law, against a pretty strong dislike from the southern and central parts of the State.
Permit me to say here, by way of pa- renthesis, that omnibuses and horse-cars were introduced nearly ten years after this time. The City Railway Company was chartered Feb. 14, 1859. Pardon the remark, that whatever honor attaches to driving the first spike belongs to your speaker. It was done on State, corner of Randolph. The road reached Twelfth street on the 25th of April, 1859,- only seventeen years ago. Now the whole city is gridironed with them, and they are essential to its business life.
I should like to give you the history of the Rock Island, the Alton & St. Louis, the Burlington & Quincy, the Pittsburgh & Fort Wayne, and other roads, but time and space forbid. For several years suc- ceeding 1854, the leading men of Chicago had to endure a great deal of eating and drinking, as our railways were opened to cities in all directions; and for this ser-
And, when he found it defective, he reconstructed it, and it became a new law. And this old law of Mr. Wright's, made over as the Indian gun was, is the system now. True, he soon got powerful help- ers in Chicago, among whom I remember as the earliest, William Jones, J. Y. Scammon, Dr. Foster, W. H. Brown, and Flavel Mosely-succeeded by such others as the Hon. Mark Skinner, John Went- worth, and a good many more, including William H. King, Esq.
" Another of Mr. Wright's public movements was that of the 10-per-cent .- loan law. The Legis- lature, moved by the southern Granger interest, had passed a law making a higher interest than 6 per cent. usurious. Mr. W. knew that a repeal of that law was a hopeless undertaking. But it pre- vented all obtaining of money for use-operating especially hard against the interests of Chicago and the northern end of the State, where recovery from the financial disasters of 1836-17 had set in with a good deal of strength. He therefore drew up an amendment to the 6-per-cent. law, allowing an interest of 10 per cent. "on money loaned." As usual, his circulars flew like the leaves of autumn ; and, contrary to the prediction of many, the amendment passed the Legislature. The relief was instantaneous and great.
Chicago - old Chicago - knows Mr. Wright's peculiarities well enough. He saw further into a subject, in the beginning, than most men. But once in it, he seemed to love his ability to handle it, and often his interest in it ; and the outcome some- times threw undeserved obloquy on the whole undertaking. Had he been able to carry things through as he begun them, he had probably been a millionaire, and alive to-day."
Mr. Wight does not state, what most of our older citizens know, that, when Mr. Wright " relin- quished the helm" of the Prairie Farmer, "a year and a half " after it started, he committed it to Mr. Wight, as its editor. The sterling integrity, untiring zeal, sharp, strong common sense, and trenchant pen of Mr. Wight made the Prairie Farmer for many years one of the very best agri- cultural papers ever published in this country. Mr. Wright was too completely absorbed in the other important enterprises of which Mr. Wight speaks, to give much attention to his paper, though retaining the proprietorship of it. But to his enterprise in starting it, and to that of Mr. Wight in conducting it, Chicago and the North- west owe a far greater debt of gratitude than they will ever be able to repay, or even appreciate. Those were forming epochs in our history, and much of our wonderful progress and prosperity are the direct result of their labors.
123
HISTORY OF CHICAGO.
vice, as for all others, they showed a capacity and willingness, as well as a mod- esty, which has made them distinguished all over the country. On the 10th of May, 1869, the Central and Union Pacific Rail- ways joined rails at Promontory Point, thus completing the grand railway system across the continent. And here I may be permitted the incidental rem rk that we who live with them, and enjoy the first fruits of their enterprise, do not sufficient- ly honor the men who bridge our great rivers and bind every section of the Union together in bands of iron and steel, never to be broken, such men as Wm. B. Ogden, John B. Turner, R. B. Mason, Thomas C. Durant, Leland Stanford, and scores of others that might be named. History shows that it was not only the men who bore the victorious eagles of old Rome through distant nations, but who built roads to connect them with the Eternal City, that received the highest honors. Thus it was that great national thorough- fares were built thousands of miles long, from the North to the Black Sea, and as in that case all roads pointed towards Rome, so at least nine-tenths of all the roads in all this broad land point to Chi- cago. Do you know that the title even now worn by the Pope of Rome has come down to him from those old road-builders? Pontifex Maximus simply means the great- est bridge-builder, the proudest, and thus far the most enduring title ever worn by earthly monarch. Let our city honor the men for making Chicago commercially in this centennial year what Imperial Rome was politically in past ages. While we give all honor to these men, let not the name of John S. Wright be forgotton, who, addressing himself to even the greater work, in 1849, combined and gave direction to the political and moral forces that enabled them to complete the grand- est system of improvements ever made in the history of the world.
You will expect me to say something of the press of the city. In 1848 the Journal had rooms in what was then the Saloon Buildings, on the southcast corner of Clark and Lake streets. The Gem of the Prairie, and The Tribune as its daily, maintained a precarious existence in an old wooden shanty on the northwest cor- ner of Lake and Clark streets. Messrs. Wheeler, Stewart and Scripps were the editors. It was burned out, and then located at No. 1714 Lake street. My friend the Hon. John Wentworth pub- lished the Democrat in very aristocratic quarters-at Jackson Hall, on LaSalle street, just south of Lakc. He had the only Hoe power-press in the city. In the fall of 1849, finding I preferred my old occupation of using books rather than of selling them, I disposed of my interest in
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.