When Chicago Was Very Young

I

BECAUSE my grandfather lived in Fort Dearborn and my mother was born within its palisades, I naturally heard, from my earliest childhood, many stories of that valiant band of settlers, traders, and soldiers who made their home in what was then a wilderness and who endured hardships and braved dangers in order that they might establish a settlement between the East and the Mississippi River.

My early imagination was caught by the stories of Mrs. La Compt, a most remarkable woman who came to Chicago during the latter part of the eighteenth century. She was married three times and lived until she was 109 years of age! Mrs. La Compt was a woman of great mentality and an extraordinary constitution; she was also possessed of wonderful courage. She had always been good friends with the Indians, speaking their language and developing a remarkable influence over the Pottawattomies. She would often be awakened in the dead of night by an Indian friend who would tell her that the Indians were contemplating an attack on the white people. Instead of seeking her own safety, she would always set out alone to meet the war party, and never failed to avert bloodshed. Sometimes the settlers would arm themselves and await the attack, and after two or three days they would see the hostile Indians approach with Mrs. La Compt at their head, their hideous war-paint changed to sombre black, to show their sorrow for having entertained evil designs against her friends. This all sounds too good to be true, but I believed it then and I have properly verified it since.

I was told that in 1803 troops from Detroit, under Captain Whistler, were ordered to Chicago. When they reached their destination they found a few traders and friendly Indians, and they determined to settle near the mouth of the river, which they found about ninety feet across, eighteen feet deep, and bordered by low banks covered with bushes. There was then a sand bar at the mouth of the river over which the troops walked dry-shod. A fort was built as soon as possible. The Indians seemed friendly, but bothered the soldiers greatly by their thieving. Many traders settled around the fort and exchanged liquor for furs, so that rum played a big part in the building of the fort just as it did later in its demolition.

All early Chicagoans know that Fort Dearborn was maintained in Chicago for nine years. It was a tedious life for the soldiers, with little excitement except an occasional scare from the Indians and the arrival of some vessel bringing supplies to the little group of soldiers and traders in the settlement. There was an abundance of game; deer were frequently seen swimming in the river and wolves were often heard howling at night.

The stories of the Indians were scarcely more exciting than those I sometimes heard of the soldiers. The personnel of the army at this time was not of a very high type; drunkenness was common and the usual punishment was a certain number of lashes. Sometimes the culprit was forced to run the gauntlet between two rows of soldiers, both ranks striking at the same time. Sometimes he had his head shaved and a bottle tied around his neck, and was drummed out of the settlement to the tune of the Rogue’s March.

In 1810, years before my grandfather came to Illinois, Nathan Heald succeeded Whistler at Fort Dearborn; he married in Louisville and brought his wife to the Fort on horseback, accompanied by her black slave-girl, the first slave owned in Chicago. When the War of 1812 with the British was at its height, hostile bands of Indians were so numerous that Captain Heald received orders to evacuate Fort Dearborn and go to Detroit . These orders he was loath to obey, as the Fort was well provisioned and he felt it could hold out a long time, while if it were abandoned its inmates would not have a chance of reaching a place of safety, as the country was filled with Indians, many of whom were crazed with liquor sold them by the white traders.

Captain Heald, however, was a soldier mid trained to obey orders. To help the little garrison, the Government sent him thirty Indian warriors under the command of Captain William Wells, a famous scout for whom our Wells Street is named.

Captain Heald ordered all liquor in the Fort to be destroyed, and this is said to have been one of the causes of the massacre the following day. All preparations being now completed for the evacuation, there issued forth the most forlorn little procession Michigan Avenue has perhaps ever seen. First came the Commander and some of the friendly Indians with their scout leader, then the militia, then Captain Heald’s wife and the wife of the lieutenant, on horseback; then the women and children in wagons surrounded by the soldiers, while friendly Indians guarded the rear. The party went south on Michigan Avenue, at that time a sandy beach with sand dunes on the western side and the lake coming up to the roadway, until they reached what is now known as Eighteenth Street. Then Captain Wells, who had gone ahead, was seen coming back, waving his hat in the direction of the west, and peering out from behind sand dunes could be seen the heads of Indians, who swooped down on the little party. The friendly Indians immediately deserted; the children and some of the women were killed at once. Captain Wells fought so bravely that after his death the Indians cut out his heart and ate it, which was the greatest compliment they could pay him. Captain Heald finally surrendered on condition that the prisoners should be spared. Many of these prisoners were tortured, however, some being burned at the stake; nine men were taken prisoner and kept as servants until two years later, when they were sold to some traders and liberated. One of these men was named Joseph Bowen; he was, however, not related to my husband.

The story of one of the men who survived the massacre is interesting. His name was David Kennison. After the massacre his skull was crushed by a falling tree; later he had a bad fall and broke his collar bone and two ribs; the discharge of a faulty cannon broke both his legs; a horse kicked him in the face and smashed in his forehead. Nevertheless he survived all these injuries, was married four times, and had twenty-two children. The last two years of his life he entered a museum, as he felt that his many adventures made him an object of interest, and his pension was not enough for him to live on. He died in 1852 at the age of 115 years, in full possession of all his faculties. He was buried in Lincoln Park and, when most of the bodies buried there were moved, his was not disturbed. In 1905 a monument was erected over his grave by some patriotic societies.

In 1815 an expedition was sent out to reëstablish Fort Dearborn, and the Fort was occupied off and on until 1832, when it again housed a garrison. This was the time of the Black Hawk War, and the Fort was crowded with settlers who had taken refuge there, something like two hundred people being housed under its hospitable roof. About 1835 my grandfather, Edward H. Hadduck, came to Chicago in charge of $200,000 which he brought in a prairie-schooner wagon from Detroit to Chicago. This money was to be used to pay the Indians for certain obligations which the Government had incurred. When my grandfather reached Chicago he saw so many possibilities for a young man that he immediately returned to Ohio, married my grandmother, and brought her to Chicago. They were obliged to take refuge in the Fort, and I have often heard my grandmother tell of the trials of living in the same room with fifty other people; of how difficult it was to get water, and how she had to sneak out of the Fort down to the river, to avoid the Indians, of whom she was very much afraid.

Help finally came from the East, but the garrison had hardly settled down before cholera broke out and many people died. From this time Chicago forged steadily ahead. Her position at the foot of Lake Michigan on the great highway of trade secured her commercial advantages which no other city could rival.

II

I became so familiar with the stories of these early days that it is difficult to disentangle them from my actual experiences, but my earliest recollections are clustered around an old-fashioned red-brick house belonging to my grandfather, which was set far back from the road on the corner of Wabash Avenue and Monroe Street. There were shade trees in front of the house, and a broad strip of greensward between the house and the roadway. This road was made of good black prairie soil. When muddy it was almost impassable, and when dry there were huge ruts in it which shook up everyone who drove over them. At one time there was a hole in the road opposite our front door and two boards were stuck in it, on one of which was roughly scrawled: ‘No bottom here; good road to China.’

When my grandfather built this new house and moved from his Lake Street residence, the neighbors all regretted that he and my grandmother were to live so far out of town, where it would be difficult to meet in the evenings for the parties they so often enjoyed together.

The house itself was big and roomy. The front door, on Wabash Avenue, was opened only twice a day — once when my grandfather went to his mill in the morning and once when he returned at night. He had a partiality for that door and refused to use the side door, which stood unlatched during the day for the use of the other members of the family.

I always met my grandfather when he came home at night. He was an interesting figure, wearing black broadcloth clothes, with a high collar, an old-fashioned black stock, and, alas, a large diamond solitaire in his shirtfront. His high hat was always shiny, as well as his right coat-sleeve, which served instead of a hat brush. When he came home at night he was all covered with white dust from his mill, and I used to get a brush to help him leave this dust on the doormat rather than in the immaculate hall, I can see him now, putting his head in at the door and calling to me; as I came running down the stairs he would take off his tall hat, which contained papers of all descriptions, — leases, deeds, mortgages, bank notes, even the morning paper, — and usually something he had brought home for me. I used to say to him, ‘Grandfather, how do you manage to get your hat off when you see a lady on the street ? ‘ He would chuckle and reply, ‘Oh, I just shake the brim of it a little.’ When I said, ‘Why don’t you carry your money in your pocket?’ he would answer, ‘My dear, your grandmother does not like to see me with my pockets bulging.’

One time, when my grandfather climbed a ladder to look at a new building belonging to him which was in process of erection, he lost his balance and fell from the second story to the ground. He was picked up unconscious, with the tall hat, full of papers, crushed down over his head; but after it was pried off he was found to be unhurt except for a slight cut. The tall hat had saved his life, and in commenting on it afterward he said to me quizzically, ‘My dear, always wear a stiff hat when you climb a ladder.’

On another day he came back from town and, taking off his tall hat, said: ‘I sold the corner of Washington Street and Wabash Avenue [where Marshall Field and Company now stands] for a good sum, and I am going to divide it between you and your mother.’ With that he pulled out bank notes and checks and made a fair division. This was the first money I ever had, and it gave me an income of $5000 a year that I was allowed to spend as I chose.

To the right of the front hall in the red-brick house was a huge parlor, which was kept shut except on rare occasions when we had a party. It had huge mirrors at either end, and the chairs were shrouded in sheets. The carpet was a wonderful study in green and white, representing an African jungle where, underneath obese bananas, succulent pineapples, and waving palms, little lambs played with snakes, and ladylike lions sat down with the lambs.

A little marble-top table, on which reposed the family Bible, stood in the middle of the room, and on Sundays, when I was good, I was shown the awful pictures in this holy book and told of the horrible fate awaiting those who wandered from the straight path. There were also whatnots and étagères about the room, filled with ugly brica-brac of every description, and on the mantel, between two candlesticks, stood a glass-covered monstrosity of wax flowers. I remember going into this room one day on tiptoe to see what it really looked like, when suddenly I saw another figure advancing toward me. I gave a scream and rushed for the door, upsetting on the way a statuette of the Prodigal Son, and flung myself into the arms of a small cousin who had come to spend the day with me. As a result of this encounter my cousin’s front teeth found my forehead very hard, the teeth were picked up from the carpet, and I was borne bleeding from the room, only to be reproved later for playing in the front parlor.

In those days I was a pale, anæmiclooking little child, a fit subject for a nutrition class. I used to go about with a book under my arm called Reading without Tears, which belied its title, for I wept copiously over it every day.

As I suffered much from earache and sore throat, I usually had a hot onion tied over one ear, or a piece of rawsalt pork around my throat. I hated myself because I smelt of onions and meat, and seriously considered suicide in the cistern. Possibly one reason for my poor health might be traced to our dark cellar where, on a high shelf, was crock after crock of different kinds of pickles, all of which I sampled every day.

I used to play in front of the house a great deal, because the open air was thought to be good for me. Across Monroe Street was an old garden belonging to Mr. Eli B. Williams. It had all kinds of fruit in it, and, though I was never invited to pick this fruit, there were occasions when I visited the garden uninvited and partook lavishly of gooseberries. I remember one occasion in particular when I almost stripped the gooseberry bushes and immediately afterward drank nearly a pint of cream that I stole from our cellar. The result was so very disastrous that I never visited the garden again.

We kept a cow, and one of my chief amusements was helping the hired man drive this cow up Wabash Avenue every morning to a vacant lot on Adams Street, where the cow ate heartily most of the day, coming home only in time to be milked. I can well remember, when this lot was afterward built upon, my grandmother complaining bitterly that the city was making no provision for the feeding of the cows of its citizens. ‘What are we to do for milk if our cows cannot get fresh food?’ she said.

Adams Street was then so far out of town that one adventurous pioneer who had built his house there faced it north so that he could look toward the town and see the lights at night, and not feel lonely.

III

In these early days the cattle for the stockyards were unloaded at the Randolph Street Station of the Illinois Central Railroad and were often driven through the streets to the yards. Michigan Avenue was not much more than a sandy beach, and as Wabash Avenue was a harder and better roadway the cattle were frequently driven down it. Sometimes the steers would become frightened and would rush from one side of the street to the other, coming up on the sidewalk and imperiling the passers-by. Many a time I have quickly climbed over the low iron fence around my grandfather’s yard in order to get away from the frightened beasts. Indeed, the streets were not much safer sixty years ago than they are today, although the dangers were slightly different.

Walking along Wabash Avenue one morning, I heard a great outcry and was suddenly seized by a man who, carrying me in his arms, rushed up the steps of a house, ran into the vestibule, and shut the outside door. I immediately began to kick and scream, and kept it up until he said: ‘Be quiet, you little fool! There is a mad dog out there!’ And sure enough, a large mad dog, foaming at the mouth, ran past. I remember another innocent-looking, worn-out dog that took refuge on our front porch and, for some reason, was supposed to be mad. There was an old saying at that time to the effect that if a dog did not like cold water it was surely mad. We did not dare to open the door to throw the water, but my mother pulled the window down from the top, filled a dishpan with cold water, and, mounting a stepladder, dumped the water unceremoniously on the head of the unoffending dog. He naturally snarled his disapprobation at this Niagara and fled to another part of the porch, while the whole family solemnly asserted that the dog was surely mad because it did not like water. I was dispatched out the back door to the nearest police-station to get an officer; he came, and perpetrated what remains in my mind to this day as a brutal, cold-blooded murder.

Another day, while I was walking with a child on Congress Street, just opposite the present Auditorium Hotel, an infuriated bull came rushing up the street. I saw him in time and managed to scramble over the fence, but my companion was hastily tossed into the yard belonging to Mrs. L. Z. Leiter, who took us in and comforted us, our feelings and our clothes being somewhat tom by the encounter.

We were country folks in those days and often went for all-day picnics to the old Gage Farm on Michigan Avenue near Sixteenth Street. It was a day’s outing to get down there and back, and it took a long time to drive through the sand on Michigan Avenue. We were often bothered by what we called ‘greenheads,’ large black flies with green heads which drove the horses and even the people nearly wild. I remember our horse wore a black-rubber net which shook as he moved, and I covered my head with the lap robe to keep from being stung. As we slowly drove our horse and buggy my grandmother would tell me stories of the early days in Chicago when she lived in the Fort and used to ferry herself across the Chicago River on a little flat boat propelled by the passenger, who pulled a rope stretched across the river. She would tell me how she used to go to the North Side to pick blueberries; how oftentimes she would hear an Indian coming and would crouch down beside the bushes until he had passed. Then there were thrilling tales of Indian massacres and of her experiences when the Indians bombarded the Fort, shooting flaming arrows into it and attempting to set it on fire, and of how happy the beleaguered were when the scout, who had been sent out to get help, returned with soldiers, and the Indians were dispersed.

She told me of her first house on Michigan Avenue near South Water Street; of how convenient it was — she actually had a sink, and the water ran away in it. The lake was n’t far off, and all she had to do to get water was just to take two pails across the road and dip water out of the lake. She said, ‘It was like playing at housekeeping to have everything made so easy!’

She would point out to me, as we drove around in our buggy, the prairieschooner wagons, which were often seen on our streets, and she would tell how my grandfather had come to Ohio for her in one of these wagons, and brought her all the way to Chicago; of what a lovely drive it was, although she sat with a loaded rifle across her knees. She told me of paying fashionable calls when she lived on Lake Street, and how the mud was so very deep that at times it was almost impossible to cross the street. When she first went there to live she would borrow a neighbor’s ox-cart, which, when it had been thoroughly scrubbed and furnished with a plank for a seat, was backed up to the door. My grandmother and her friend, attired in clean calico dresses, would then mount the cart, take their seats on the plank, and be conveyed to the various houses where they were going to call.

When I was five years old we moved into a little house on Michigan Avenue just opposite Park Row. It was, of course, ‘way out of town, too far out for me to go to Dearborn Seminary, which was where Marshall Field’s Wabash Avenue store now stands, so I was sent to an old dame’s school, half a block away from home, where I endured a perfect purgatory. My seatmate — for we sat at double or ‘intimate’ desks — had epilepsy, and several times a week I would raise a shaking arm and say, ‘Please, teacher, Belle is having a fit.’ Poor Belle would then be pried off me, as she invariably clutched me around the neck, refusing to let go.

I went to this school at a time when every girl wanted to have curly hair; if nature had not so endowed her, she purchased her ‘fringe,’ as we called it, by the yard, — black or brown or red, as the occasion required, — and this fringe was sewed into her hat. I can remember seeing rows of these hats, with the hair sewed in them, hanging on the racks of the little coatroom.

Dearborn Seminary was later moved to Twenty-second Street and Wabash Avenue, and I used to drive there with my pony in a little low phaeton and put the trap in a near-by stable while I was at school.

When I graduated from this seat of learning in my sixteenth year, fully versed in all the isms, our graduation exercises were held in a large church. The twelve girls who stood highest in the class, attired in white-muslin dresses with blue sashes, read their graduation exercises from the platform to a large and appreciative audience of parents, admirers, and friends. I had composed a very elegant and artistic essay, rather foreign to my character, entitled, —

It began as follows: —

‘The artist is king; he reigns over a mighty realm. His dominion is not bounded by earth or the stars. In his chariot of fancy, drawn by wingèd steeds, he travels through space, through cloud and sunshine, through light and darkness, until his object is attained; floods cannot drown, fires cannot burn his possessions. His titledeeds date from Adam. When God breathed into him the breath of life, then the grant was given to mortal man in dreams to see things invisible; in dreams to move and breathe and live a life which touches the Divine. All men are not given thus to live.’

Having soared around in the clouds and held communion with a few of the planets, I descended to earth, and, as I remember, the remainder of my essay was about the workingman and his difficulties. I considered the essay a work of art, but unfortunately my father would not permit me to be so unwomanly as to appear in a crowded church and take part in any graduation exercises. I was therefore not allowed to read my essay, but sat at the foot of the platform with those who stood lowest in the class, and listened to the oratorical flights of my more fortunate friends. It was no consolation that I had that morning been permitted to read my essay before the pupils of the school, for I felt they were not old enough to appreciate intelligently my flight into the realms of fancy.

IV

It has often been my bad fortune to have to collect money for charitable purposes here in Chicago, but I do not think I shall ever forget my first experience in begging. A little girl walking down Michigan Avenue was crushed against a lamp-post by a runaway horse and her arm was broken. I was very much interested in the affair and, finding there was no money to pay the doctors, I started to raise fifty dollars. Going up and down Michigan Avenue, I inquired at each door for the lady of the house, — I knew almost all of them and they knew my family, — and then asked for fifty cents for the child. In almost all cases it was given to me; but I shall never forget the hurt to my pride when one of the richest of Chicago women, living in what was then a marble palace, not only refused to give me the fifty cents, but upbraided me for begging at her door, literally driving me down her steps with rough words and rougher gestures. Even the fact that I was able to collect $57.50 never made up to me for this, my first rebuff.

Although I had graduated from Dearborn Seminary, I did not feel that my education was finished, and for the next two years I prescribed for myself a careful course of study which consisted in looking through the index of the Cyclopædia, finding the subjects which interested me, and studying them conscientiously. Although this study cannot be said to have been along any one line, it certainly gave me a broad outlook. About this time my education was also being completed in the arts and in fine handiwork. I was made to practise one hour a day at the piano and, after several years of study, was able to play ‘Comin’ through the Rye’ and ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’ I also took lessons in making wax flowers and became more or less proficient. My handiwork — large bouquets of roses, japonicas, camellias, and violets — was treasured by my parents, a glass case being put over each effort, which was then placed on the étagère. My fancywork, when we were en famille, always consisted of hemming sheets and wash cloths. By the time I made my entry into society I was ignorant in everything and accomplished in nothing.

There were many evidences of culture in Chicago at this time. New York was regarded as the hub of the universe, and whenever our family went there we brought home something highly recommended to us. I remember when bronzes were in style we purchased a large bronze Pocahontas, too big for the little canoe in which she was seated. This large bronze for many years obscured the view of the street, as, according to the prevailing fashion, it was placed in our front window that it might be seen by all passers-by.

When I was a little girl Lake Michigan’s waves lapped Michigan Avenue and there was a small breakwater just outside. We children used to walk on this breakwater; and once I fell into the lake and was fished out, a very cold and frightened little girl, by a bystander. But the worst fright of my life occurred one day when I was looking underneath the sidewalk in front of my house. At that time every sidewalk in Chicago was built on a level of its own. When you walked along the street you went up and down innumerable steps, and swept them neatly with the long trains that were then the fashion hi street clothes. I often made journeys of exploration underneath these sidewalks, and one day I stumbled over something in the darkness. To my horror I found it was the body of a man. Later it turned out that he had been murdered. After that I kept to the open and left unexplored the intricate mazes of the streets under the sidewalks.

The horse-and-buggy was at this time the vehicle used by Chicago people for business, pleasure, or shopping. I remember my father telling me one Sunday that a new park had just been opened on the North Side, and he took my mother and me in the buggy to see it. It was called Lincoln Park. It had been a graveyard, and as we drove through it we saw countless open graves, with a piece here and there of a decayed coffin, and every now and then, on a pile of dirt, a bone, evidently dropped by those removing the bodies. The whole place looked as if the Judgment Day had come, the trumpets had sounded, and all the dead had arisen from their graves, dropping now and then a little piece of their anatomy as they fled to Graceland or Rose Hill, where they again deposited themselves underground. I remember coming away from the Park thinking that never should I be tempted to seek it for pleasure; and in later years, when I pleaded with park trustees and officials to see that the Park was better lighted and more adequately policed because of the young people who frequented it, I often thought of my first glimpse of the place and the anything but pleasurable effect it produced upon my childish mind. Years after, when the house in which I now live was built, I can remember bones cropping up from the ground when the foundation was being dug. The site had been a burial ground, and the first maids who came to me in that house said they were very doubtful about coming lest the people who had been buried in the basement should rise and haunt them.

As we stand now on Astor Street, with its great shade-trees on either side and its beautiful houses, and look north toward Lincoln Park, we find it difficult to realize that this street was once only a sandy beach which had been used as a cemetery.

I have lived for thirty-two years in my house on this street. It is big and comfortable, with large rooms which have been used at various times for all kinds of meetings. The dining-room, which has a small platform at one end, has seen all kinds of gatherings, from Suffrage meetings, where we were urging women to join the Suffrage ranks, to neighborhood meetings, where we made appeals for the betterment of conditions in the ward.

This room has been used many times for dinners at which some scheme to benefit the city or county has been hatched out behind closed doors. When my friend, Mr. Alexander A. McCormick, was made President of the County Board, he told me that he was most anxious to appoint good people as heads of the various county departments, warden of the hospital, head of the social-service department, and so forth, and that if we could suggest good people he would appoint them. I immediately called together about twenty-five people, heads of settlements, men interested in civic affairs, social workers, and so forth, and we sat all one evening trying to think of good men and women for the various county positions. But in spite of our efforts we were unable to select people for many of the institutions, as the county did not pay a large enough salary to secure first-class men. I remember what difficulty we had in trying to think of a man to head the county hospital. Such a position required experience and a genius for organization, and we were obliged to confess that we had utterly failed to find, for the salary paid, anyone who could fill it.

Some of the plans which we formed at these dinners or meetings were announced at large meetings held later, and I have heard people say that they wondered where the plan originated — but no one ever gave us away.

When a group of representative citizens come together to use their influence for the making of public opinion, it is not so difficult to swing a new project or a reform after a certain number of people have been secured as its backers. Unfortunately, one has only a limited number of interested citizens on whom to call in matters of this kind — too many people are indifferent to civic affairs. They blame the administration if things go wrong, yet they take no part in the great business of guiding a democracy through its governmental machinery.

(To be continued)