George Ronan Ensign George Ronan was a commissioned officer of the United States Army . Educated at West Point and commissioned as an officer in the 1st Infantry Regiment in 1811 , he was assigned to duty at Fort Dearborn , a frontier post at the mouth of the Chicago River . It was a luckless posting , for barely one year later Ronan was killed in combat in the Battle of Fort Dearborn . He was the first member of the West Point Corps of Cadets to perish in battle . Military service . George Ronan attended the United States Military Academy for almost three years , from June 1808 to March 1811 . At the time Ronan matriculated , the fledgling institute of military education was six years old , and he accepted his commission in the academy ' s ninth year . A trickle of shako - clad cadet s graduated from the then - tiny institution of higher military training to take up duty stations in sensitive security points up and down the young United States . One of the most threatened positions was a small stockaded fort and associated fur trading post near the southern tip of Lake Michigan . Although the Chicago River and its hinterland was officially part of the United States , the Fort Dearborn soldiers and fur traders were sharply outnumbered by adjacent bands of Native Americans . The predominant Chicago River tribe was the Potawatomi nation , a group of clans who retained their loyalty to the British even though their land was nominally ceded to the U . S . A . by the 1783 Treaty of Paris . On the North American Great Lakes , the years immediately prior to the breakout of the War of 1812 were characterized by increasingly embittered competition between British - Canadian fur traders and American merchants , including traders aligned with the interest of the powerful John Jacob Astor of the American Fur Company . Native Americans who were embedded in British - aligned fur trading and kinship networks were aware of the advance of the American frontiersmen into southern Indiana and Illinois Territory . Although Ronan did not know it , his 1811 - 1812 assignment to Fort Dearborn was a duty posting to a spark point . Ronan is described by survivors as a high - spirited young ensign who did not get along well with his commanding officer , fort commander Captain Nathan Heald . Heald , possibly in retaliation , ordered Ronan to undertake a series of increasingly dangerous operations outside the fort walls in ultimately futile efforts to knit together the tiny band of French - speaking , English - speaking , and Native American - speaking farmers and traders who lived in cabins scattered up and down the Chicago River . When war broke out , Heald received orders to evacuate his post and remove his garrison to Fort Wayne , Indiana . The news of the fort ' s evacuation , scheduled for August 15 , 1812 , emboldened the Chicago " British band " of Potawatomi , who took a position two miles south of the doomed stockade along the shore of Lake Michigan . On the morning of August 15 , Ronan ' s attempt to help lead a knot of civilian refugees part of the overall 93 - person column of evacuees ran into an ambush . Witnesses saw Ronan continuing to struggle even after suffering a mortal wound , and he allegedly accounted for two hostile warriors before his death . Legacy . Survivors believed that the spot where Ensign George Ronan was struck down was at or close to what later became the intersection of 21st Street and Indiana Avenue , located in the Prairie Avenue neighborhood of Chicago ' s Near South Side . Ronan is repeatedly described as the first West Point officer to die in the War of 1812 . As an " ensign " , the lowest rank of commissioned officer in 1811 - 1812 , Ronan held a rank equivalent to that of the subsequent rank of second lieutenant , and is sometimes referred to as such . Sculptor Henry Hering , in his 1928 " Defense " mounted on the Michigan Avenue Bridge adjacent to the site of Fort Dearborn , centered the bas - relief on an unnamed junior officer who was depicted performing the role protection of civilians that Ronan tried to carry out in reality . Ronan Park , a 3 - acre ( 0 . 01 km² ) unit of the Chicago Park District located at 3000 West Argyle Street on the Chicago River , is named in Ronan ' s honor .