and while the noble animal was grappling with the wretch, she reached the stockade, unhitched a horse, leaped on his back, and took flight through the wilderness, seventy-five miles to her Indian home at Chillicothe. The fate of the faithful dog was never known, but he was probably killed while fighting in defense of his mistress. The horse died the next day after he had performed so wonderful a feat, without rest or sustenance. This heroic girl and her sister Elizabeth, afterwards became the mothers of some of the first pioneers of Chicago.

In the eventful year of 1763 was born at Quebec a boy, destined not only to participate in the romantic riot of forest life as it then was in the great interior, but to fix his name on the page of history, with the honorable distinction as the Father of Chicago. This was John Kinzie. His father died in his infancy, and his mother married a Mr. Forsyth, and removed to New York. At the age of ten or twelve Jolin determined to go back to his native place, and armed with this resolution, went aboard a sloop ready to sail for Albany. The bark was under way before the young truant was missed from the nursery. The poor mother had lost a former child by her first husband, the remains of whom had been picked up in the woods of Canada, lost and starved to death, and now her heart bled afresh for what she supposed to be the awful fate of Johnny. Fortune, however, had ordered it otherwise. The lad made the acquaintance, on board the sloop, of a gentleman going to Quebec, who paid his fare, and landed him safely at the place. Here the young adventurer soon got employment as an apprentice to a silversmith,* and won his way to distinction among the restive spirits of his eventful age, and next we find him a fur-trader in Detroit during the English occupation of the place. After the adventure of Margaret, the captive, as just told, she, with her sister Elizabeth, were taken to this place by their foster-father, who felt proud of his adopted children, and here they became acquainted with John Kinzie. It is not strange that the brilliant young adventurer beheld the beautiful captive Margaret with the eye of a lover, nor that the heroine felt a similar sentiment for him, and they were soon married. Elizabeth at the same time met a Scotchman named Clark, and married him, and their swarthy foster-parent took his path back to Chillicothe alone. The two young couples lived in Detroit about five years, during which time Margaret had three children, William, James and Elizabeth, and Elizabeth had two children, John K. and Elizabeth.

The treaty of Greenville, in 1795, having restored peace to the border, Mr. Isaac McKenzie, the father from whom the captives * Wabun, p. 193.

had been taken almost a quarter of a century before, received tidings of his children, and went to Detroit to see them. As might be supposed, the sight aroused tender emotions that had slumbered for years in painful suspense. Nor were the hearts of the children less moved at the sight of their aged parent, whose memory had never been obliterated, even during their savage training in the tumult of an Indian camp. Under this strong pressure of filial devotion the two mothers, with their children, returned with their father to the old home, to which arrangement both of their husbands consented. A final separation was not intended, but time and distance divorced them forever. Mr. Kinzie afterwards removed to Saint Josephs, where he married a Mrs. McKillip, the widow of a British officer. Margaret married Mr. Benjamin Hall, of Virginia, and Elizabeth married Mr. Jonas Clybourn, of the same place. David, the oldest son of Benjamin Hall and Margaret, made a journey to Chicago in 1822, where he remained three years. Here a wilderness of shining waters, as the upper lakes then were, nestled amidst an unlimited wilderness of woodland and prairie teeming with fertility hidden beneath a forest studded with overgrown trees, or a prairie ornate with tall grasses and thrifty shrubbery. On his return to Virginia, his flattering account of the place and its future destiny, which he foreshadowed with a truthful forecast, induced a number of persons to emigrate thither. The first of these was Archibald Clybourn, the oldest son of Elizabeth, who remained a permanent resident and an esteemed citizen, well known to thousands of the present inhabitants of Chicago.

His mother was Elizabeth, the captive, who with her second husband, Mr. Clybourn, soon afterwards came to Chicago. More will be said of them in future pages. Mr. Benjamin Hall was another one of Chicago's pioneers who emigrated to the place in consequence of Mr. David Hall's commendations of its future promise. Margaret, the captive, was his aunt, and to him the writer is indebted for the detail of Margaret's and Elizabeth's history.* Mr. Hall is now a resident of Wheaton. He came to Chicago in 1830, and was the proprietor of the first tannery ever established there. He married the sister of the Hon. J. D. Caton, and raised an esteemed family of children, who are now scattered in the west. Elizabeth Kinzie, daughter of John Kinzie, by Margaret, became the wife of Samuel Miller, from a respectable Quaker family of Ohio. This woman was highly esteemed by all who knew her for her excellent traits. Her husband kept the Miller house at the forks of the Chicago rivers, and is still

*A partial history of Margaret's captivity is given in Howe's Historical Collections of Virginia, pages 278 and 279.

remembered by a few of Chicago's old settlers as a respected citizen. Mrs. Miller died at this house in 1832, leaving three very promising children.

James Kinzie came to Chicago about 1824, and was well received by his father, who assisted him in his first efforts to establish himself in the place. He amassed considerable wealth, but lost the most of it in the crash of 1837, when he removed to Wisconsin, where he died about the year 1860.

We will now return to the early days of the fort, where a few superanuated soldiers stood guard at this frontier post through the winter of 1803-4, like hermits in a wilderness. If they obtained any tidings of what was going on in the outside world, it must have been through the agency of some chance pedestrian messenger, and any news he might bring would lack authenticity. But even this satisfaction was probably not afforded them, in their wild recluse. The next spring, however, was destined to bring an arrival to their post of a permanent character, whose presence should help to bring around them the social conditions of settled communities. Mr. John Kinzie, himself, was then a resident of Detroit, but had determined to make Chicago his future home. His wife was the mother of a daughter by her first husband, which daughter was now a member of his family. The baby, John H. Kinzie, was now about six months old. An Indian trail then led from Detroit through Ypsilanti (then known as Charms trading station), Niles and St. Joseph, around the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, thence one branch led to Chicago and another to Rock Island, on the Mississippi river. This was the only way by which Mr. Kinzie could reach the place, and horseback was the only means of transportation.

Accordingly their effects were packed in sacks and lashed to a horse's back, and Mr. and Mrs. Kinzie and the daughter were each mounted on a horse, with Johnny slung in a swaddling pocket from the horn of a saddle, and the journey was begun. Day after day they pursued their wooded trail, camping out each night, till Chicago was reached. Soon after his arrival he purchased a small French trading establishment of a man named LeMai, of whom mention has been made in a previous chapter, and from time to time this hut was improved as the home of Mr. Kinzie, till a comfortable house substituted it, as shown in its picture on another page. This was the first private dwelling ever built in Chicago as an American city. It stood on the north bank of the river, opposite the fort, fronting towards the south. A small boat chained to the bank was always in readiness to ferry forward and back between his home and the fort, and this constituted Chicago as it was then, begun by John Kinzie and three French families who then resided there; one of which was Le

The first House in Chicago partly built in 1796 fineshot

THE OLD KINZIE HOUSE cepted in JOHN KINZIE on 1801