Chicago and the Old Northwest, 1673-1835 / A study of the evolution of the northwestern frontier, together with a history of Fort Dearborn

by Milo Milton Quaife

The explorers passed through Chicago and the historian of the expedition has left an unusually doleful description of the place and of its prospects.

Kingsbury, Jacob. Papers (MS).

Kingsbury was an officer in the army in command of Detroit and other northwestern posts at various times from 1804 to 1812, and the officer first selected by the government to lead the northwestern army in the campaign of 1812. His papers, in the possession of the Chicago Historical Society, consist of letter books, original letters, and other documents, and shed much light upon conditions in the Northwest, particularly in the army, in this period. The Library of Congress possesses three bound volumes of Kingsbury's correspondence, but their contents are of comparatively slight importance for the present work.

Kinzie, John. Genealogy of the Descendants of (MS).

This is a typewritten manuscript in the Chicago Historical Society library, compiled by Mrs. Gordon, the granddaughter of Kinzie. It deals only with the descendants of the trader's second, or legitimate, family.

——. Family Genealogy (MS).

This is a portion of a lengthy typewritten genealogical record of the Kinzie, Lytle, and other families of early Detroit owned by Clarence M. Burton of Detroit. It was compiled by an advocate of the claims to legitimacy of the offspring of Kinzie's first family, and later submitted to the criticism of Mrs. Gordon, who believes that her grandfather's first family was an illegitimate one.

[Kinzie, Mrs. John H.] Narrative of the Massacre at Chicago, August 15, 1812, and of Some Preceding Events (Chicago, 1844). Pamphlet.

Aside from some scattered source material, this is the first printed account of the massacre, and it constitutes the basis of almost all the later accounts that have been written to the present time. The author was a daughter-in-law of John Kinzie, and her information was obtained chiefly from his wife and his stepdaughter, the wife of Lieutenant Helm. The narrative is fanciful and unreliable, yet because of the use made of it by later writers a knowledge of it is now necessary to any understanding of the literature pertaining to the Fort Dearborn massacre.

——. Wau Bun, the "Early Day" of the Northwest. New edition, with an introduction by Reuben Gold Thwaites (Chicago, the Caxton Club, 1901).