Jean Baptiste Point du Sable

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Jean Baptiste Point du Sable bigraphy, stories - Founder of Chicago

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable : biography

unknown – 28 August 1818

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (or Point de Sable, Point au Sable, Point Sable, Pointe DuSable)(before 1750 – August 28, 1818) is regarded as the first permanent resident of what became Chicago, Illinois. Little is known of his life prior to the 1770s. In 1779, he was living on the site of present-day Michigan City, Indiana, when he was arrested by the British military on suspicion of being an American sympathizer in the American Revolutionary War. In the early 1780s he worked for the British lieutenant-governor of Michilimackinac on an estate at what is now the city of St. Clair, Michigan, before moving to settle at the mouth of the Chicago River. He is first recorded living in Chicago in early 1790, having apparently become established sometime earlier. He sold his property in Chicago in 1800 and moved to St. Charles, Missouri, where he died on August 28, 1818.

Point du Sable has become known as the "Founder of Chicago". In Chicago, a school, museum, harbor, park and bridge have been named, or renamed, in his honor; and the place where he settled at the mouth of the Chicago River in the 1780s is recognized as a National Historic Landmark, now located in Pioneer Court.

Legacy and honors

Founder of Chicago

Point du Sable is the earliest recorded resident of the settlement close to the mouth of the Chicago River that grew to become the city of Chicago. He is therefore widely regarded as the first permanent resident of Chicago and given the appellation "Founder of Chicago". Others preceded his settlement but they are not known to have stayed. The expedition headed by Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette in 1673, though probably not the first Europeans to visit the area, are the first recorded to have crossed the Chicago Portage and travelled along the Chicago River. Marquette returned in 1674, camped a few days near the mouth of the river, then moved on to the portage, where he stayed through the winter of 1674–75. Joliet and Marquette did not report any Indians living near the Chicago River area at this time, though archaeologists have since discovered numerous Indian village sites elsewhere in the greater Chicago area. Two of La Salle’s men built a stockade at the portage in the winter of 1682/1683. The Mission of the Guardian Angel was somewhere in the vicinity of Chicago from 1696 until it was abandoned in around 1700. The Fox Wars effectively closed the Chicago area to Europeans in the first part of the 18th century. The first non-native to re-settle in the area may have been a trader named Guillory, who might have had a trading-post near Wolf Point on the Chicago River in around 1778. After Point du Sable, Antoine Ouilmette is the next recorded resident of Chicago; he claimed to have settled at the mouth of the Chicago River in July 1790, a few months after Hugh Heward visited Point du Sable.Letter of Antoine Ouilmette to John H. Kinzie, June 1, 1839; reproduced in

Memorials

By the 1850s, historians of Chicago recognized Point du Sable as the city’s earliest non-native permanent settler. For a long time, however, the city did not honor him in the same manner as other pioneers. Chicago commemorated Point du Sable’s homestead in 1913 with a plaque on the corner of Kinzie and Pine Streets. In the planning stages of the 1933–1934 Century of Progress International Exposition a number of African-American groups campaigned for Point du Sable to be honored at the fair. At this time, few Chicagoans had even heard of Point du Sable and the fair’s organizers presented the 1803 construction of Fort Dearborn as the city’s historical beginning. The campaign was successful however, and a replica of Point du Sable’s cabin was presented as part of the "background of the history of Chicago."

In 1965 a plaza called Pioneer Court was built on the site of Point du Sable’s homestead as part of the construction of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of America building. The Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable Homesite was designated as a National Historic Landmark on May 11, 1976. Pioneer Court is located at what is now 401 N. Michigan Avenue in the Near North Side of Chicago. In 2009, the City of Chicago and a private donor erected there a large bronze bust of Point du Sable by Chicago-born sculptor Erik Blome. In October 2010, the Michigan Avenue Bridge was renamed DuSable Bridge in honor of Point du Sable. Previously a small street named De Saible Street had been named after him. A number of Chicago institutions have been named in honor of Point du Sable. DuSable High School opened in Bronzeville in 1934. Today it is a building for three schools: Daniel Hale Williams Prep School of Medicine, the Bronzeville Scholastic Institute, and the DuSable Leadership Academy. Dr. Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, a prominent African-American artist and writer taught at the school for twenty-three years. She and her husband co-founded the DuSable Museum of African American History, located on Chicago’s South Side, which was renamed in honor of Point du Sable in 1968. DuSable Harbor is located in the heart of downtown Chicago at the foot of Randolph Street, and DuSable Park is an urban park () in Chicago currently awaiting redevelopment. It was originally announced in 1987 by then Mayor Harold Washington. The US Postal Service has also honored Point du Sable with the issue of a Black Heritage Series, 22-cent postage stamp on February 20, 1987.Scott catalog # 2249.