Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1891-08-14
SOME HISTORIC LOGS.
THE FRAME OF PART OF OLD
FORT DEARBORN.
A Most Interesting Relic of Early Days
In Chicago-Tlmbers That Have
Sheltered Hundreds From
Massacre.

ing of dust and festooned with cob
webs, piled beneath u frame shed in
jackson park is all that remains OF
the Oldest and most historic house in
Chicago, says the Inter Ocean. These
rough, square timbers, with the marks
of the pioneer woodlands axe yet up
on them. once made the officers quart
ers in old Fort Dearborn. The trees
from which they were hewn grew
along the North shore, where now
stand the palatial residences of some
of Chicagos wealthiest citizens.
The house was built in the spring of
1916 The beeches, and populars.
and oaks which composed its walls
were chopped down and hewn into
beams s inches square by the gallant
troopers of Co. F. Third United States
Infantry, Captain Hezekiah Bradley
commanding. The work was finished
in the latter part of that year. The
wooden palings-had been set round
about the new fort. The block house,
with its quaint, overhanging upper
story and windows. that served also
for portfolios, was completed and
! stocked with provisions against a siege
by the murderous Foxes and Pouta-
watomies. The barracks and officers
quarters were prepared and fitted up
with such furniture as the wild prairie
camp afforded. The windows in the
old house consisted of few panes of
TN ,l,tl hn1 Cd
Philadelphia, with other comforts of
civilization. on pack-horses. The
kitchen was rugged out with an old
''foot-stove, the only one in the West
at that time. The other furniture was
homemade by the soldiers and the
few then residents of the post
This was the second Fort Dearborn.
The first had been burned by the In
dams after the awful massacre of 1872.
when half the garrison and all the
non combatants, including women and
children, were murdered on the lake
front at point about where Twelfth
street now is. There, amid the tangled
swamp grass and the bushes half
buried in the sand-drifts, the bodies, or
rather bones, of the massacred lay till
Captain Bradley and his men came
thither in 1916 and gave the remains
decent burial.
The fort was the centre of the social
life Of the settlement in those days.
and the officers quarters were the
focus so to speak of the fort. Many
pleasant evening was passed within
the walls formed by the pile of logs
now awaiting architectural resurrec-
ton in Jackson Park. The guests
were men and women whose names
have become historical in Chicago
Jean Baptiste Beoubien and his sons
and daughters, John Kinzie and his
family, Jonas Clybourn, Dr. Van
Voorhis, Gurdon |. Hubbard, Antoine
Dechamps. Antoine Guillimette and
others of Chicago's first families. The
Misses Kinzie used to cross the river
from their fathers house, which stood
on the opposite bank from the fort.
Those dumb timbers might narrate
some blood curdling stories could their
ax-gashed lips assume the power of
speech. Embarrassing rs well as blood
curdling would their tales be, for
many an act for real Embarrassing was
done within q short distance of them.
Within sight of the old fort the
Indians slaughtered many n prisoner,
sntil the banks of the Chicago reeked
with the settlers blood almost as redly
as the dark and bloody ground" OF
Kentucky.
Within the small rooms formed by
these logs were gathered on May Is,
1881, frightened, covering tremb-
ling crowd of women and children.
These had fed in mortal terror from
the outlying settlements to escape the
tomahawk and scalping knife of Black
Hawks murderous bands of redskins.
1t was just after the awful massacre
by the savages at Indian Creek, and a
friendly Pottawatomie gave the settlers
at Naperville warning that the scalp
ing parties were almost upon them.
All fled to Fort Dearborn, the women
and children in wagons, the men fol-
| lowing at considerable distance to
repel the savages should an attack be
made. Three families, that OF the
Rev. S. II. Beggs and two others. oc-
cupied this house while they were in
the fort.
In this old house, too, General Win
field Scott had his headquarters during
the fearful month of July, 1881, when
the cholera broke out among the troops
in the fort, destroying ruthlessly those
| whom the fortunes of the Indian war
fare had spared. From the narrow
windows General Scott saw the dead
borne by the dying to the temporary
graveyard on the lake shore Mt where,
Madison street would now meet the
water were it extended to the shore.
Into this house crowded as many Of
the inhabitants of the settlement as
could squeeze themselves in on the
night OF the great ''Winnebago scare"
The Winnebago Indians went on the
war-path in 1927, but the Pottawato-
mics who lived In the vicinity of Chi
cago remained friendly. The latter
tribe, by means of treaty. were to
be paid for their lands in instalments,
TO be paid at Fort Dearborn at certain
| tinesa Ona IF thasa occasiops waa I'm