APPENDIX B.

[AK]A river and fort at the head of Lake Michigan.

[AL]A handsome negro, well educated and settled in Chicago, but much in the interest of the French.

So steps upon the stage of history the earliest non-Indian settler of Chicago; a man who built, at about the time of our Declaration of Independence, the house which was standing within the memory of hundreds of Chicagoans of 1892—the well-known "Kinzie Mansion," that faced the north bank of the river where Pine Street now ends.

Mrs. John H. Kinzie, in her delightful book, "Wau-Bun, the Early day in the North-West," calls him "Pointe au Sable," and says he was a native of San Domingo, and came from that island with a friend named Glamorgan; who had obtained large Spanish grants in or about St. Louis. She adds that Jean Baptiste sold his Chicago establishment to a French trader named Le Mai, and went back to Peoria where his friend Glamorgan was living, and died tinder his roof, presumably about 1800. From Le Mai, the property passed in 1803, to John Kinzie, the real pioneer of Chicago.

Hispaniola (Hayti and San Domingo) was discovered and even colonized, by Columbus, in 1492. It had then some two million inhabitants, living like our first parents in Eden (Genesis I, 27), but the unspeakable cruelty of the Spaniards so depopulated the splendid and happy island, that in 1517—twenty-five years later—it was requisite to import negro slaves to carry on the mining, and to-day not one soul of the original race survives.

The French began to come in 1630, and by the treaty of Ryswick [1697] the island was divided between Franceand Spain. Then began the greatness of the Haytian negro, which culminated in Toussaint L'Ouverture, liberator of his race from French slavery and his land from French domain; and later, victim to Napoleon's perfidy. Under the French rule many free negroes were educated in France, very probably Baptiste Pointe de Saible among the rest. At any rate he was of the adventurous spirit which would rather be first in a new sphere than last in an old, and so, with Glamorgan, he came over to Mobile or New Orleans. Then (probably on one of John Law's "Compagnie de l'Occident" bateaux) he came up the Mississippi to Kaskaskia, Cahokia, St. Louis, and at last to Peoria, on the Illinois, where he left Glamorgan, and pushed on to the Pottowatomie outposts where we find him in 1778, the object of Colonel de Peyster's admiring dislike.

Edward G. Mason, in an address before the Historical society, gives a tradition in regard to Pointe de Saible's welcome on Chicago soil, which tradition appears in "Early Western Days," a volume published by John T. Kingston, formerly a state senator of Wisconsin. It runs thus: An Indian living south of the Portage River—now called the Chicago—being out hunting, suddenly came upon a strange object, half hidden by the underbrush. It was a black face with white eyes and woolly hair! (Probably no Indian of his tribe had ever seen a negro.) After gazing at the novel sight awhile, he grunted, "Ugh! Mucketewees!" (black meat.) He captured the odd animal and carried him to the village, whither came the Indians from far and near to gaze, to wonder, and to speculate. Fortunately for Baptiste, for Chicago and for history, the consensus of opinion called it "bad meat," and so the creature's life was spared.

Shaubena, a chief of the Pottowatomies, was in and about Chicago long after their war dance of 1836. He had seen Pointe de Saible, but unfortunately his knowledge concerning him is not on record. Mr. Mason says regretfully:

In 1855, at the old Wells Street station, I saw old Shaubena wearing moccasins, leggins, coat and plug hat with colored strings tied around it. He was gazing with great delight at the Galena Railway engine, named for him, and calling the attention of the people on the platform to it. He doubtless thought that a much more wonderful sight than old Jean Baptiste.

SHAUBENA IN OLD AGE. (ABOUT 1856.)

One other mention of Pointe de Saible is thrown up from the almost barren shore of Western history. The third volume of the Wisconsin Historical Society's collection contains certain "Recollections" of Augustin Grignon (a grandson of Sieur Charles de Langlade), who became the first permanent white settler of Wisconsin about 1735, and, as we have seen, is named by de Peyster in his verses, among which "Recollections" occurs the following precious bit:

"At a very early period there was a negro who lived here (Chicago) named Baptiste Pointe de Saible. My brother, Perish Grignon, visited Chicago about 1794 and told me that Pointe de Saible was a large man, that he had a commission for some office, but for what particular office or for what government I cannot now recollect. He was a trader, pretty wealthy, and drank freely. I do not know what became of him."

With these bits of chance allusion—touches here and there—we get a quite distinct impression of the lonely Baptiste. His origin shows possibility of greatness, for it was the same with that of François Dominique Toussaint,surnamed l'Ouverture. Like him, he was a French West-Indian mulatto. He was large, handsome, well-educated and adventurous, traits which mark pretty clearly his migrations and his fortunes. Neither in Mobile, New Orleans, Kaskaskia, nor St. Louis could he probably feel at home, for at each of these places nigritude was associated with servitude. Among the Peoria Indians he probably found scanty elbow-room, especially if his friend and rival trader, Glamorgan, was, as his name implies, of Welsh blood—a race which gleans close, and thrives where others starve.

Not unnaturally would he, as tradition suggests, aspire to headship of the great tribe of Pottowatomies, for he knew how vastly superior he was to the best of them; and quite as naturally would he fail, seeing that the red strain of blood and the black have even less in common than has each with the white. At the same time, considering the state of domestic relations at that time and place, we may be very sure that he did not fail to "take some savage woman"—one or more—to rear his dusky race in large numbers and much rude, half-breed gaiety and contentment.

As to his office, one would like greatly to know something about it, and is prone to wish that somebody would look it up—in the general government archives, or those of the North-West Territory, which had been established in 1788, General St. Clair being its first governor, and Cincinnati (Losantiville) its capital. Why should it not have been under Harrison and Wells? It would scarcely have been an English office in view of the unpleasant allusion by de Peyster, though the English maintained emissaries hereabouts—fomenters of discontent—away on almost to the war of 1812. Still, it might be worth while to try the Canadian records. Barring swell a discovery, it seems probable that the last word has been written about him.

Jean Baptiste's name "Pointe de Saible" (or Sable) might be suspected of being a description of his residence rather than an inheritance from his forefathers, for the cabin of squared logs, so early built and so lately destroyed, stood at the head of the great sand-point which of old interrupted the course of the Chicago river lakeward,and turned it south for about half a mile to where it flowed over a long, fordable, narrow bar formed by the ceaseless sandstream that moves from north to south along the western shore of Lake Michigan. But the records and traditions are old enough and exact enough to uphold the name as a patronymic, and leave the place as a mere coincidence. One might almost as easily trace it to his lack of grit and perseverance, seeing that he put his hand to the plow and looked back; that he came to Chicago in hope and moved away in despair; that having a "homestead location" he did not stay and "prove up;" that, owning, by occupation, a thousand million dollars worth of real estate, he sold it for a song instead of waiting for a "boom."Point de sable—"no sand."

The two other characteristics of Chicago's first merchant-prince, which are preserved for us by lucky chance, are that he was "pretty wealthy" and that he "drank freely." Only one of these traits has come down to his successors of a century later. [From "Liber Scriptorum," published by the Authors' Club, New York.]

Joseph Kirkland.

CHICAGO RIVER. JUNCTION OF NORTH AND SOUTH BRANCHES (1830).

Proposed Plan for Improving the Mouth of Chicago River

FORT DEARBORN RECORDS AT WASHINGTON.

WAR Department records, back of the war of 1812, are few and poor; partly, no doubt, for the reason that during that short struggle a British force, sailing up the Potomac, seized upon the defenceless little city of Washington and burned its public buildings with their contents. The Hon. Robert Lincoln, Secretary of War (under President Garfield) at the time of unveiling the Block House Tablet, May 21, 1881, kindly furnished to Mr. Wentworth copies of all documents on file relating to Fort Dearborn and its garrison, (Fergus' Hist., Series No. 16.)

Extract from a letter written June 28, 1804, by General Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War under President Jefferson:

Being of opinion that, for the general defence of our country, we ought not to rely upon fortifications, but on men and steel; and that works calculated for resisting batteries of cannon are necessary only for our principal seaports, I cannot conceive it useful or expedient to construct expensive works for our interior military posts, especially such as are intended merely to hold the Indians in check. I have therefore directed stockade works aided by block-houses to be erected at Vincennes, at Chikago, at or near the mouth of the Miami of the lakes, and at Kaskaskia, in conformity with the sketch herewith enclosed, each calculated for a full company; the block-houses to be constructed of timber slightly hewed, and of the most durable kind to be obtained at the respective places; the magazines for powder to be of brick, of a conic figure, each capable of receiving from fifty to one hundred barrels of powder. Establishments of the kind here proposed will, I presume, be necessaryfor each of the military posts in Upper and Lower Louisiana, New Orleans and its immediate dependencies excepted. I will thank you to examine the enclosed sketch, and to give me your opinion on the dimensions and other proposed arrangements You will observe the block-houses are to be so placed as to scour from the upper and lower stories the whole of the lines. The back part of the barracks are to have port-holes which can be opened when necessary for the use of musketry for annoying an enemy.It will, I presume, be proper ultimately to extend palisades round the block-houses.

It will, I presume, be proper ultimately to extend palisades round the block-houses.

Statement compiled from the Records of the Adjutant General's office in the case of Fort Dearborn, with copies of orders:

Fort Dearborn, situated at Chicago, Ill., within a few yards of Lake Michigan. Latitude 41° 51′ North; Longitude 87° 15′ West. Post established by the United States forces in 1804. (From 1804-12 no records are on file.)August 15th, 1812, the garrison having evacuated the post and wereen routefor Ft. Wayne, under the command of Captain Nathan Heald, 1st U. S. Infantry, composed of 54 Regular Infantry, 12 Militia men, and one interpreter, was attacked by Indians to the number of between 400 and 500, of whom 15 were killed. Those of the garrison killed were Ensign George Ronan, 1st Infantry, Dr. Isaac Van Voorhis, Captain Wells, Interpreter, 24 enlisted men, U S. Infantry, and 12 Militia-men; 2 women and 12 children were also killed. The wounded were Captain Nathan Heald and Mrs. Heald. None others reported. The next day, August 16th, 1812, the post was destroyed by the Indians. Reoccupied about June 1816, Capt. Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry, commanding. The troops continued in occupation until October, 1823, when the post was evacuated and left in charge of the Indian agent; It was reoccupied Oct. 3rd, 1828.Capt. Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry, commanded the post from June 1816, to May 1817, Brevet Major D. Baker to June 1820; Captain Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry, to January 1821, Major Alex Cummings, 3rd Infantry, to October, 1821; Lieut. Col. J. McNeal, 3rd Infantry, to July 1823; Captain John Greene, 3rd Infantry, to October, 1823; post not garrisoned from October 1823, to October 1828. No returns of post on file prior to 1828.

August 15th, 1812, the garrison having evacuated the post and wereen routefor Ft. Wayne, under the command of Captain Nathan Heald, 1st U. S. Infantry, composed of 54 Regular Infantry, 12 Militia men, and one interpreter, was attacked by Indians to the number of between 400 and 500, of whom 15 were killed. Those of the garrison killed were Ensign George Ronan, 1st Infantry, Dr. Isaac Van Voorhis, Captain Wells, Interpreter, 24 enlisted men, U S. Infantry, and 12 Militia-men; 2 women and 12 children were also killed. The wounded were Captain Nathan Heald and Mrs. Heald. None others reported. The next day, August 16th, 1812, the post was destroyed by the Indians. Reoccupied about June 1816, Capt. Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry, commanding. The troops continued in occupation until October, 1823, when the post was evacuated and left in charge of the Indian agent; It was reoccupied Oct. 3rd, 1828.

Capt. Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry, commanded the post from June 1816, to May 1817, Brevet Major D. Baker to June 1820; Captain Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry, to January 1821, Major Alex Cummings, 3rd Infantry, to October, 1821; Lieut. Col. J. McNeal, 3rd Infantry, to July 1823; Captain John Greene, 3rd Infantry, to October, 1823; post not garrisoned from October 1823, to October 1828. No returns of post on file prior to 1828.

Copies of Orders.

ORDER NO. 35.

Adjutant General's Office, Washington, 27 May, 1823.The Major-General commanding the army directs that Fort Dearborn, Chicago, be evacuated, and that the garrison thereof be withdrawn to the headquarters of the 3rd regiment of Infantry.One company of the 3rd regiment of Infantry will proceed to Mackinac and relieve the company of artillery now stationed there, which, with the company of artillery at Fort Shelby, Detroit, will be withdrawn and ordered to the harbor of New York.The commanding General of the Eastern department, will give the necessary orders for carrying these movements into effect, as well as for the security of the public property at Forts Dearborn and Shelby.By order of Major-General Brown.

Adjutant General's Office, Washington, 27 May, 1823.

The Major-General commanding the army directs that Fort Dearborn, Chicago, be evacuated, and that the garrison thereof be withdrawn to the headquarters of the 3rd regiment of Infantry.

One company of the 3rd regiment of Infantry will proceed to Mackinac and relieve the company of artillery now stationed there, which, with the company of artillery at Fort Shelby, Detroit, will be withdrawn and ordered to the harbor of New York.

The commanding General of the Eastern department, will give the necessary orders for carrying these movements into effect, as well as for the security of the public property at Forts Dearborn and Shelby.

By order of Major-General Brown.

(Signed)Chas. J. Nourse,Act'g Adjutant-General.

ORDER NO. 44.

Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, 19 August, 1828.(Extract.) In conformity with the directions of the Secretary of War, the following movements of the troops will be made.Two companies of the 5th regiment of Infantry to reoccupy Fort Dearborn, at the head of Lake Michigan; the remaining eight companies to proceed by the way of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers to Fort Howard, Green Bay, where the headquarters of the regiment will be established.Four Co's of the Reg't to constitute the garrison of Fort Howard; two Co's for the garrison of Michilimackinac, and two for that of Fort Brady.4. The Quartermaster-General's department to furnish the necessary transportation and supplies for the movement and accommodation of the troops.The subsistence department to furnish the necessary supplies of provisions.The Surgeon-General to supply medical officers and suitable hospital supplies for the posts to be established and reoccupied.5. The Commanding Generals of the Eastern and Western departments are respectively charged with the execution of this order as far as relates to their respective commands.By order of Major General Macomb, Major-General Commanding the Army.

Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, 19 August, 1828.

(Extract.) In conformity with the directions of the Secretary of War, the following movements of the troops will be made.

Two companies of the 5th regiment of Infantry to reoccupy Fort Dearborn, at the head of Lake Michigan; the remaining eight companies to proceed by the way of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers to Fort Howard, Green Bay, where the headquarters of the regiment will be established.

Four Co's of the Reg't to constitute the garrison of Fort Howard; two Co's for the garrison of Michilimackinac, and two for that of Fort Brady.

4. The Quartermaster-General's department to furnish the necessary transportation and supplies for the movement and accommodation of the troops.

The subsistence department to furnish the necessary supplies of provisions.

The Surgeon-General to supply medical officers and suitable hospital supplies for the posts to be established and reoccupied.

5. The Commanding Generals of the Eastern and Western departments are respectively charged with the execution of this order as far as relates to their respective commands.

By order of Major General Macomb, Major-General Commanding the Army.

(Signed)R. Jones,Adjutant-General.

ORDER NO. 16.

Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, 23 Feb., 1832.(Copy.) The headquarters of the 2nd Regiment of Infantry are transferred to Fort Niagara. Lieut. Col. Cummings, with all the officers and men composing the garrison of Madison Barracks, Sackett's Harbor, will accordingly relieve the garrison of Fort Niagara; and Major Whistler, on being relieved by Lieut.-Col. Cummings, with all the troops under his command, will repair to Fort Dearborn (Chicago, Illinois) and garrison that post.Assistant Surgeon De Camp, now on duty at Madison Barracks, is assigned to duly at Fort Dearborn, and will accompany the troops ordered to that post. These movements will take place as soon as the navigation will permit.By order of Major-General Macomb.

Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, 23 Feb., 1832.

(Copy.) The headquarters of the 2nd Regiment of Infantry are transferred to Fort Niagara. Lieut. Col. Cummings, with all the officers and men composing the garrison of Madison Barracks, Sackett's Harbor, will accordingly relieve the garrison of Fort Niagara; and Major Whistler, on being relieved by Lieut.-Col. Cummings, with all the troops under his command, will repair to Fort Dearborn (Chicago, Illinois) and garrison that post.

Assistant Surgeon De Camp, now on duty at Madison Barracks, is assigned to duly at Fort Dearborn, and will accompany the troops ordered to that post. These movements will take place as soon as the navigation will permit.

By order of Major-General Macomb.

(Signed)R. Jones,Adjutant-General.

GENERAL ORDER HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. NO. 80.

Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, Nov. 30th, 1836.(Extract) I. The troops stationed at Fort Dearborn, Chicago, will immediately proceed to Fort Howard and join the garrison atthat post. Such public property as may be left at Fort Dearborn will remain in charge of Brevt-Major Plympton, of the 5th Infantry; who will continue in command of the post until otherwise instructed.By order of Alexander Macomb, Maj.-Gen. Com'd'g-in-Chief.

Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, Nov. 30th, 1836.

(Extract) I. The troops stationed at Fort Dearborn, Chicago, will immediately proceed to Fort Howard and join the garrison atthat post. Such public property as may be left at Fort Dearborn will remain in charge of Brevt-Major Plympton, of the 5th Infantry; who will continue in command of the post until otherwise instructed.

By order of Alexander Macomb, Maj.-Gen. Com'd'g-in-Chief.

(Signed)R. Jones,Adjutant-General.

INTERIOR OF NEW FORT (1850), LAKE HOUSE IN THE DISTANCE.

When the last fort was being demolished [1856] an old paper was found which bore internal evidence of being a survival from the first fort. How it could have survived the flames of 1812 is a mystery. Perhaps some brick bomb-proof magazine chanced to shelter it, and the builders of the new fort, finding it, laid it in a closet, where it remained, hidden and forgotten. One would like to see it to-day—if it also survived October 9, 1871!

Permission is hereby given for one gill of whiskey each: Denison,[A] Dyer,[A] Andrews,[A] Keamble (?), Burman, J. Corbin,[A] Burnett, Smith,[A] McPherson, Hamilton, Fury[A], Grumond[A] (?), Morfitt, Lynch,[A] Locker,[A] Peterson,[A] P. Corbin,[A] Van Horn,[AM]Mills.

(Signed),

[AM]Appear on the nuster-roll given onpage 150. Several of the names recur in the Plattsburg story of the nine survivors (21 May 1814).

On December 29, 1836, the garrison was finally withdrawn from Fort Dearborn, and after its thirty-three years of stirring vicissitudes it passed into a useless old age, which lasted a score of years before its abandonment as a government possession. In fact, one of its buildings—a great, barn-like, wooden hospital—was standing, in use as a hospital storehouse, up to 1871, when the great fire obliterated it, with nearly all else that was ancient in Chicago.

WAUBANSA STONE WITH GREAT FIRE RELICS.

An exception to this destruction and the fast gathering cloud of oblivion, is to be found in an old red granite boulder, with a rude human face carved on it, which stood in the center of the fort esplanade, and which is now (1891) one of our few antiquarian treasures. It is nearly eight feet high by three feet in greatest diameter, and weighs perhaps 4,000 pounds. In prehistoric times the Indians used the concave top for a corn-mill, and for many, many weary hours must the patient and long-sufferingsquaws have leaned over it, crushing the scanty, flinty corn of those days into material for the food of braves and pappooses.

Many persons have looked on it as a relic of prehistoric art—the sacrificial stone of an Aztec teocalli perhaps—but Mr. Hurlbut gives the cold truth; more modern, though scarcely less romantic. He says it was set up in the fort, and soldiers, sick and well, used it as a lounging-place. Sometimes it served as a pillory for disorderly characters, and it was a common expression or threat, that for certain offenses the offender would be "sent to the rock." Waubansa was a Chicago chief, and a soldier-sculptor tried to depict his features on the stone; and (to quote Mr. Hurlbut):

"The portrait pleased the Indians, the liege friends of the chief, greatly; for a party of them, admitted into the block-house to see it, whooped and leaped as if they had achieved a victory, and with uncouth gestures they danced in a triumphant circle around the rock."

In 1837 ... Daniel Webster paid a visit to the West, and took Chicago in his route.... The conveyance was a barouche with four elegant creams attached. Mr. Webster was accompanied by his daughter and son. Every wheel-vehicle, every horse and mule in town, it is said, were in requisition that day, and the senator was met some miles out by a numerous delegation from thisnew city, who joined in the procession.... It was the fourth of July, the column came over Randolph Street bridge, and thence to the parade-ground within the fort. There were guns at the fort, which were eloquent, of course, though the soldiers had left some weeks before. The foundation of all this outcry about Mr. Webster is, that the base and platform on which that gentleman stood when he made the speech within the fort, was the rock, the same Waubansa stone.... Justin Butterfield (who stood directly in front of the senator) swung his hat and cheered the speaker.

The "statue" was pierced to form the base of a fountain, and was set up as one of the curiosities of the great Sanitary Commission Fair, held in 1865, in Dearborn Park, in aid of the sick and wounded in the war for the Union. In 1856 it was adopted as a relic by the Hon. Isaac N. Arnold—member of Congress during the war and one of the staunchest and ablest of patriots, and most devoted of friends to the soldiers—who moved it to his home, in Erie street. Mr. Arnold's house was burned with the rest in the great fire of 1871, and old "Waubansa"passed through the flames with the same unmoved look he had preserved through his earlier vicissitudes. Afterward numerous fire relics were grouped about him and a photograph taken, wherein, for the first time, he looks abashed, as if conscious of the contrast between his uncouthness and the carvings which surround his antique lineaments. The stone stands open to the public view in the grounds adjoining the new home (100 Pine Street), which Mr. Arnold built after the fire, and in which he lived up to the time of his lamented death, in April, 1884.

Who were the victims of August fifteenth, 1812? What were the names of the killed, the wounded, the tortured, the missing? This is a question to which only the merest apology for an answer can be given. In tens of thousands of cases the very act of dying for one's country forbids the possibility of becoming known to fame. Nameless graves dot our land from north to south, and from east to west, especially from the Susquehanna to the Rio Grande and from the Ohio to the Gulf. Heaven knows who were those dead, and who they might have become if they had not died when and where they did. Let us hope that somewhere in the universe they have their record—on earth they are forgotten.

I have aimed at recording every surviving name of the dwellers in Chicago up to the massacre. As an effort toward that end, I give, on the next page, the last muster and pay-roll of the troops at the old fort, as shown by existing records. It is headed:

"Muster roll of a company of Infantry under the command of Captain Nathan Heald, in the First Regiment of the United States, commanded by Colonel Jacob Kingsbury, from Nov. 30, when last mustered, to December 31, 1810."

It concludes with a certificate in the following form, identical, by the way, with the formula in use in our army to this day (1893):

Recapitulation.—Present, fit for duty, 50; sick, 5; unfit for service, 3; on command, 1; on furlough, 1; discharged, 6. Total, 67.We Certify on honor that this muster-roll exhibits a true statement of the company commanded by Captain Nathan Heald, and that the remarks set opposite their names are accurate and just.

Recapitulation.—Present, fit for duty, 50; sick, 5; unfit for service, 3; on command, 1; on furlough, 1; discharged, 6. Total, 67.

We Certify on honor that this muster-roll exhibits a true statement of the company commanded by Captain Nathan Heald, and that the remarks set opposite their names are accurate and just.

J. Cooper, S. Mate.

Ph. O'Strander, Lieutenant commanding the Company,

* Men who are likely to have been in service at the time of the massacre.

AWILD ONION.

WILD ONION.

THE WHISTLER FAMILY.

ACCORDING to Gardner's Military Dictionary, Captain John Whistler was born in Ireland. He was originally a British soldier, and was made prisoner with General Burgoyne at the battle of Saratoga, in 1777, where our General Henry Dearborn was serving as Major. The captives were conducted to Boston, where, by the terms of the capitulation, they should have been paroled; but for some reason (which the English, by considered no sufficient excuse for not complying with the military agreement) the Continental Congress held them as prisoners of war until the peace of 1783.

John Whistler did not return to England, but joined the American army and became first sergeant, and then won his way to a captaincy in the First Infantry, in which capacity he came, in 1804, and built the first Fort Dearborn. He was brevetted major in 1812, and served with his company until it was disbanded after the close of the war (June, 1815). He died in 1827 at Bellefontaine, Missouri, where he had been military storekeeper for several years. John Wentworth (Fort Dearborn; Fergus' Historical Series, No. 16, p. 14) says:

Some writers contend that had Captain Whistler been in charge of the fort instead of Captain Heald, the massacre would not have taken place. Captain Heald has had no one to speak for him here. But he was appointed from Massachusetts a second lieutenant in1799, and could not be supposed to have that acquaintance with the characteristics of the Indians which Whistler had, who had been in his country's service ever since Burgoyne's surrender in 1777, and principally against the Indians, and frequently participating in the campaigns of General Arthur St. Clair, in one of which he was wounded.

Of him Captain Andreas says (Hist. Chi. Vol. I, p. 80):

After the war he married and settled in Hagerstown, Md., where his son William was born. He enlisted in the American army and took part in the Northwestern Indian War, serving under St. Clair and afterward under Wayne. He was speedily promoted, rising through the lower grades to a lieutenancy in 1792, and became a captain in 1794. He rebuilt the fort in 1815[AN][after the destruction and massacre in 1812] and removed to St. Charles, Mo., in 1817. In 1818 he was military storekeeper at St. Louis, and died at Bellefontaine. Mo., in 1827. He was a brave and efficient officer, and became the progenitor of a line of brave and efficient soldiers.

[AN]Apparently an error. The second fort was built by Captain Hezekiah Bradley, who was sent here for that purpose with two companies of infantry, arriving July 4, 1816.

His son, George Washington Whistler, was with Captain John when the family came to Chicago, being then three years old. This is the Major Whistler who became a distinguished engineer in the service of Russia. Another son. Lieutenant William Whistler, with his young wife (Julia Ferson) came to Chicago with Captain Whistler. He will be mentioned later as one of the last commandants of Fort Dearborn, holding that post until 1833. He lived until 1863.

Julia Ferson, who became Mrs. William Whistler, was born in Salem, Mass., 1787. Her parents were John and Mary (La Dake) Ferson. In childhood she removed with her parents to Detroit, where she received most of her education. In May, 1802, she was married to William Whistler (born in Hagerstown Md., about 1784), a second lieutenant in the company of his father. Captain John Whistler, U. S. A., then stationed at Detroit. (Fergus' Historical Series No. 16.) She visited Chicago in 1875, when, at eighty-seven, her mind and memory were of the brightest, and conversation with her on old matters was a rare pleasure. Mrs. General Philip Sheridan is her grand niece, and cherishes her relationship as a patent to high rank in our Chicago nobility. No portrait of John Whistler is known to exist. For likenesses of Major and Mrs. William Whistler see pages 58 and 59.

MRS GWENTHLEAN [WHISTLER] KINZIE (1891).

A daughter of William and this charming old lady was born in 1818, and named Gwenthlean. She was married at Fort Dearborn, in 1834, to Robert A. Kinzie, second son of John Kinzie, the pioneer. Mrs. Gwenthlean Kinzie is now living in Chicago, and has been consulted in the preparation of this narrative.[AO]

[AO]On mentioning to Judge Caton that Mrs Robert Kinzie was again living here following a long absence, the venerable Chief-Justice, after a moment's thought, sad: "Yes, I remember the marriage, and that the bride was one of the most beautiful women you can imagine. I have never seen her since that time. Ladies were not plentiful in this part of the world then, and we were not over particular about looks, but Gwenthlean Whistler Kinzie would be noted for her beauty anywhere at anytime." And on looking at the lady herself, one can well believe all that can be said in praise of her charms in her girlish years—sixteen when she was married.

Mr. Hurlbut (Chicago Antiquities, p. 83) gives the following spirited account of a visit made in 1875 to Mrs. Julia (Ferson) Whistler, wife of William and daughter-in-law of old John, the whilom soldier in the army of General Burgoyne. (It will be observed that Mr. Hurlbut slightly mistook his war record).

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