History of Chicago, (Cook County) Illinois United States of America

Local History Notes:

The 1854 Gazetteer of the United States by Thomas Baldwin shows:

CHICAGO, she-kau´go, the most populous and commercial city of Illinois, and seat of justice of Cook county, is situated on the south-western shore of Lake Michigan, and on both sides of Chicago river, 278 miles W. by S. from Detroit, 180 miles E. by S. from Galena and 410 miles by water from St. Louis. Lat, 41° 52´ 20" N., lon. 87° 35´ W. This city, which appears destined to become the chief commercial emporium of the Northwest, in consequence of its commanding situation, was settled about the year 1831, previous to which it was a mere trading post amidst the wigwams of the Indian. It was incorporated in 1836; in 1840 it contained 4853 inhabitants; in 1850, 29,963, and in 1853, not less than 60,000; from which it may be perceived that the population has doubled itself about every four years.

The ground on which the city stands is an extremely level plain, sufficiently elevated to prevent inundation, and extending many miles towards the south and west. The adjacent country consists of beautiful and fertile prairies, interspersed with groves, and diversified by gentle slopes. Chicago river, and its North and South branches, which unite about three-quarters of a mile from the lake, separate the city into three portions. The main stream, flowing directly eastward, is from 50 to 75 yards wide, and from 15 to 20 feet deep, and forms one of the best natural harbors on the lake. Substantial piers have been extended into the lake, and a lighthouse erected on one of them. Vessels ascend Chicago river and one of its branches nearly 5 miles.

The city is laid out in rectangular blocks, with streets extending nearly north and south, and east and west. The shore of the lake and the northern parts of the city are occupied with the finest residences, but the principal business is transacted on the south side of the river, the banks of the South branch being lined with docks and large warehouses. Many of the streets are paved with planks and lighted with gas. Michigan avenue, which is, perhaps, the most beautiful street in the city, extends along the shore of the lake, and is bordered with shade-trees. Next to, and parallel with this, is Wabash avenue, adorned with double rows of trees.

The most remarkable public buildings are the new court house, the Merchants' Exchange, the Marine Hospital, the Medical College, and the Second Presbyterian church. The court house is a splendid edifice of Lockport limestone, having a prison on the first floor, the county offices on the second, and a court room and town hall on the third, with a cupola and roof of galvanized iron. The Marine Hospital is a spacious and handsome building, of Milwaukee brick. The Second Presbyterian church, at the corner of Wabash and Washington streets, in the Gothic style, with a steeple about 200 feet high, is perhaps the most beautiful edifice of its class west of New York. It is built of a kind of pitchy stone, in which black and white are mingled, and presents a singular and striking appearance. Chicago contains 7 banks and about 20 printing offices, from which numerous daily and weekly journals are issued. The public schools are well organized, and are accommodated with excellent buildings.

By a glance at the map of the United States, the great commercial advantages of Chicago will at once be perceived. It communicates by means of the chain of lakes with the Atlantic cities; the Illinois and Michigan canal, 100 miles long, affords an easy access to the Mississippi valley, and to the coal mines of Central Illinois; while the Galena and Chicago railroad penetrates to the mineral region of Wisconsin and Iowa. The Michigan Central and Michigan Southern railroads were completed to this place in 1852, opening a direct steam communication with New York city. Numerous other lines centering in this city are in process of construction, namely, the Illinois Central, which will extend to the mouth of the Ohio, and connect with the Mobile railroad; the Illinois and Wisconsin, the Chicago and Rock Island, the Chicago and Milwaukee railroad, &c.

Chicago communicates with Buffalo and intermediate ports by a daily line of steamboats, which, in respect to size, speed, and comfortable accommodations are scarcely inferior to any in the world. The number of arrivals of steamers and sail vessels in 1851, was 2279. The shipping, on June 30th, 1852, amounted to an aggregate of 25,209 tons, enrolled and licensed. The aggregate value of exports and imports in 1852, was estimated by the Governor of Illinois, in his late message, at $20,000,000. The same document states that there are 211 houses engaged in wholesale business, many of which import directly from Europe, and 26 forwarding and commission merchants, doing a heavy business. The quantifies of leading articles received at this place in 1852, are reported as follows:?2,757,011 bushels of Indian corn; 937,496 of wheat; 124,316 barrels of flour; 24,363 head of cattle, (or about 13 million pounds of beef;) 59,156 hogs, (or about 6 million pounds of pork;) 147,816,232 feet of boards, and 77 million thousands of shingles. The lumber market of Chicago is the most extensive in the Western States, employing a capital of about two million dollars. This market is also celebrated far the quality as well as the quantity of its beef.

Nearly two million dollars are invested in manufactures, the most important productions of which are steam-engines, railway cars, reaping and threshing machines, with other agricultural implements, horse-powers and other machinery, stoves, gas pipes, leather, lumber, flour, and lard oil. There were in 1851, 10 iron foundries with machine shops, which together produced annually $241,900; 9 manufactories of agricultural implements, which produced $390,250; 5 tanneries, which produced $240,000; 10 manufactories of cabinet ware, 2 or 3 of railway cars, 25 of carriages and wagons, 4 flouring mills with an aggregate capital of $155,000, and 3 planing mills.

The city is supplied with water from the lake, raised by steam power to a brick reservoir, 80 feet in height, situated at the foot of Chicago avenue. The estimated cost of these works is $400,000. The Chicago and Galena Railroad Company have erected a fine depôt for passengers, and another for freight, which is about 300 feet in length.

Among the hotels of Chicago may be mentioned the Tremont House, which is one of the largest as well as one of the very best establishments of the kind in the United States.

Biographies:

Daniel Hudson Burnham, architect, was born in Henderson, N. Y., Sept. 4, 1846; son of Edwin and Elizabeth (Weeks) Burnham; grandson of Nathan Burnham, and a descendant of Lieut. Thomas Burnham, who immigrated to Massachusetts in 1635. He removed to Chicago, Ill., with his parents in 1856, and was educated in various schools there and in Massachusetts. He studied architecture in Chicago, and settled in practice there in 1889. He was the architect of the Rookery, the Calumet club bouse, The Temple and Masonic Temple, Montauk block, Insurance exchange, Women's building, Northern hotel and several churches in Chicago, Ill., the Mills building, San Francisco, Cal., the Ellicott Square building, Buffalo, N. Y., the Society for Savings building, Cleveland, Ohio, and the Land Title building, Philadelphia. Pa. He became an authority on office buildings. He was chief architect and director of works of the World's Fair buildings, 1890-93, and was president of the American institute of architects, 1894.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Sherburne Wesley Burnham, astronomer, was born at Thetford, Vt., in 1840. He was educated at Thetford academy, adopted stenography as a profession, and during the civil war was with the army at New Orleans as shorthand reporter. At a book auction there he chanced to buy Burritt's Geography of the Heavens, and, becoming interested in the charts, the next clear night he traced out the constellations and principal stars in the heavens. This served to heighten the fascination of the study, and he purchased a cheap telescope, which he used until he exchanged it for a larger instrument. At the close of the war he removed to Chicago, where for many years he acted as court stenographer. On reading Webb's Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes, he determined to devote all his leisure time to astronomical investigations. When Alvan Clark & Sons of Cambridge, Mass., set up the great telescope in the Dearborn observatory in the University of Chicago, Burnham ordered from them a telescope with a six-inch object glass, costing eight hundred dollars. For an observatory he erected a large piece of timber in his back yard, around which he built what his friends called a "cheese box," surmounted by a dome, which could be easily turned. It was here that he made his first discoveries of double stars. Every clear night be spent in his "cheese box," leaving it only when the dawn sent the stars from his vision. He found his progress somewhat impeded by his lack of measuring instruments, but he overcame this difficulty by sending a list of his discoveries to Baron Dembowski, then the greatest living star measurer. These stars the baron took pleasure in verifying and measuring, and this resulted in a friendly correspondence, which lasted until the baron's death in 1881. Soon after this Mr. Webb began a correspondence with the American astronomer, resulting in his election as a fellow of the Royal astronomical society, his work creating great excitement among European astronomers. In March, 1873, his first catalogue, comprising eighty-one newly discovered double stars, was published in England, and at intervals he published four more catalogues, making three hundred new double stars, all close and difficult, discovered and catalogued in less than two years by an amateur astronomer, who worked with a six-inch telescope. This was more than all the observations of the previous twenty years had contributed to this part of astronomy. Mr. Burnham was corresponding with many of the leading astronomers of Europe, and when M. Angot came to the United States to visit the principal American observatories, he was amazed to find the crudity of the working place of Burnham. Later, however, he was given access to the great 18 1/2 inch telescope at the Dearborn observatory, and he became as great an expert in the measurement of double stars as Baron Dembowski. He was dissatisfied with the micrometer in general use, and invented one which was afterwards almost universally adopted. He had for four years been a regular contributor to many prominent European journals, and had published nine catalogues, embracing nearly five hundred of his new double stars, when it was proposed that he be permitted to use the telescope in the Dearborn university, and then the president of the Chicago astronomical society asked, "Who is Mr. Burnham?" He kept persistently on with his work, and achieved enviable fame in the world of science; he discovered and measured more than one thousand double stars. In 1879 he was recommended by Prof. Simon Newcomb, and employed by the trustees of the Lick observatory to test the atmospheric and other conditions of Mount Hamilton, the proposed site of the observatory. He received a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society, London, in 1894, and became an associate of that society in 1898. He was professor of practical astronomy at the University of Chicago and published a general catalogue of stars discovered by him, which was issued in volume I of the publications of Yerkes Observatory, 1900.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Joseph Church Helm, jurist, was born in Chicago, Ill., June 30, 1848. His father was a native of the state of New York, and his mother, a Canadian by birth, was of Scotch ancestry. The family removed to Prescot, Canada, soon after Joseph's birth, and about 1854 to Iowa. He joined the 1st battalion, 13th U.S. Infantry, as drummer boy in 1861 and was a prisoner in the Confederate prison at Belle Isle for three months. On his release in 1863 he was mustered in as a private in the volunteer army and served through the remainder of the war. In 1866 he was mustered out and entered the State university of Iowa, where be was graduated in 1870. He was principal of the high schools at Van Buren, Ark., 1871, and Little Rock, Ark., 1872-73, and was graduated in law at the State university of Iowa in 1874, second in a class of ninety-four. The next year he removed to Colorado Springs, Col., where he was a representative in the first state legislature, 1877-79; state senator, 1879-81; district judge, 1881-83, associate justice of the supreme court of the state, 1883-89, and chief-justice, 1889-92. He resigned in September, 1892, to accept the Republican nomination for governor of Colorado. He was defeated in the election in November, 1892, by Davis H. Waite, Populist, and returned to the practice of law. He was married in 1881 to Marcia Stewart of Colorado Springs, Col.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Erl Baker Hulbert, educator, was born in Chicago, Ill., July 16, 1841; son of Eri Baker and Mary Louisa (Walker) Hulbert; grandson of Ambrose Hulbert, and a descendant of William Hulbert, who was made a freeman in the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1632. He entered Madison (afterward Colgate) university in 1859, leaving at the close of the junior year to enter Union college, where he was graduated, A.B., 1863, A.M., 1866. He was graduated from Hamilton Theological seminary in 1865, and received the degree of A.M. from Madison in 1866. He was connected with the Christian commission in Grant's army for a short time before the close of the civil war; was pastor of the Baptist church at Manchester, Vt., 1865-68; and worked with the Rolling Mills mission in Chicago from November, 1868, until its organization as a church in March, 1870. He was married in 1869 to Ettie E. Spencer, of Troy, Pa. He was pastor of the First Baptist church, St. Paul, Minn., 1870-74; of the First Baptist church, San Francisco, Cal., 1874-78; and of the Fourth Baptist church, Chicago, Ill., 1878-81. He was professor of church history at the Baptist Union Theological seminary, 1881-92; acting president of that institution, 1884-85; and in 1892 became head professor of church history and dean of the divinity school, University of Chicago. He received the degree of D.D. from Union Theological seminary in 1880 and that of LL.D. from Bucknell university in 1898.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor