[353] Hurlbut, Chicago Antiquities, 469.
[354] Kinzie had formed an earlier connection with a woman of the same family name as his own, Margaret McKenzie. The story that has been handed down to us of her career, while doubtless idealized through dint of repetition, well illustrates the possibilities for adventure of life on the American border a century and a quarter ago. In the course of Lord Dunmore's war, Margaret and Elizabeth McKenzie were carried away from their Virginia home into captivity among the Indians. The children were adopted by a Shawnee chief who lived near the Indian town of Chillicothe in western Ohio. Years later, when they had grown to womanhood, Margaret, the elder, accompanied her foster parent on a hunting expedition to the vicinity of the modern Fort Wayne, Indiana. Here a young brave sought to force her to marry him. Spurning his attentions, she mounted a horse by night and fled through the forest a distance of seventy-five miles to her Indian home. The horse is said to have died from the effects of the wild ride, but the maiden was made of sterner stuff. At length Margaret McKenzie became the wife of John Kinzie, and her sister, Elizabeth, the wife of a Scotchman named Clark. Whether the two white men rescued the women from captivity and were rewarded for this service by their respective hands, or the old chief voluntarily brought them to Detroit on a visit, where the marriages were brought about in the usual way, depends upon which faction of Kinzie's descendants tells the story. So, too, it is still a matter of dispute whether or not the union was cemented by a formal marriage ceremony. Whatever the truth in these respects may be, the unions endured for a number of years, two children being born to the Clarks and three to the Kinzies. With the restoration of peace to the northwestern frontier in 1795 Isaac McKenzie, the father, learned of the whereabouts of his long-lost children. He journeyed to Detroit to see them, and when he returned to his home in Virginia his daughters with their children accompanied him, leaving their woodland husbands behind.
Conflicting explanations, colored in each case by partisan pride, have been given of the reasons for this untimely breaking-up of the two families. Since the only evidence in the premises is family tradition, it seems vain to seek to determine where the truth lies. Margaret Kinzie later married Benjamin Hall, while her sister became the wife of Jonas Clybourne. Two of the former's children by Kinzie, James and Elizabeth, in later years came to Chicago; so, too, did the Halls and the Clybournes; and these various family groups comprised a considerable proportion of the population of Chicago in the later twenties. On the subject of this footnote see Blanchard, The Northwest and Chicago; Hurlbut, Chicago Antiquities; Andreas, Chicago; Gordon, John Kinzie, the "Father of Chicago." For obvious reasons the Kinzie family historian makes no mention in Wau Bun of this feature of her father-in-law's career. Mr. Clarence M. Burton has a genealogy (MS) of the Kinzie family to which descendants respectively of John Kinzie's first and second families have contributed their views concerning the legitimacy of the former.
In the spring of 1804 Kinzie became a resident of Chicago. The last entry in his account book at St. Joseph bears date of April 30, 1804, while the first at Chicago occurs on May 12. The hut which Du Sable and Le Mai had in turn occupied now became the habitation of Kinzie. His business prospered and he conducted trading "adventures" at Peoria, on the Kankakee, and elsewhere, in addition to the main establishment at Chicago.[355] By the massacre and the train of events brought on by the War of 1812, however, Kinzie's property was largely destroyed and his business was ruined. After his return to Chicago in 1816 the formidable competition of the American Fur Company combined with other causes to prevent him from achieving the degree of success which he had attained during the years from 1803 to 1812.
[355] Barry Transcript; Kinzie, Wau Bun, 150.
The propriety of designating Kinzie the "father of Chicago" is dubious. No one individual can properly claim exclusive right to this title. The event which, more adequately than any other, signalizes the beginning of modern white settlement here was the founding of Fort Dearborn; and the man who with more propriety than any other may be regarded as the "father" of the modern city is Captain John Whistler, who built the first fort and for seven years dominated the life within and around its walls. He came in obedience to an order, of course, as an officer in the army. Kinzie, on the other hand, came nearly a year later to conduct the usual Indian trading-house. There is no reason to suppose that he would have come to Chicago at all, but for the prior establishment of the garrison. Yet several other traders had established themselves here, not only before Kinzie, but also before the garrison came.
It has been stated that for nearly twenty years Kinzie was the only white inhabitant of northern Illinois outside the military.[356] So far is this from being true that there was never a moment of time during his residence at Chicago when he was the only civilian here. Particularly during the latter years of his life, a number of civilians were living in Chicago and in the immediate vicinity. The undue prominence in this period of Chicago history which Kinzie has come to hold in the popular mind is due to the fact that he gained, after his death, a daughter-in-law who possessed the literary skill to weave a romantic narrative celebrating the family name and deeds.
[356] Kinzie, Wau Bun, 146-47.
The name of Kinzie is unpleasantly associated with two other characters of these early years, John La Lime and Jeffrey Nash. La Lime was at St. Joseph in 1787, apparently in the employ of William Burnett.[357] Whether he located at Chicago before the garrison came is not apparent; if not, he came the same year. Shortly after the arrival of the garrison he and Doctor Smith, the surgeon, began living together; they secured Kinzie's house for the first winter and fitted it up "in a very comfortable manner."[358] The fourth name entered in Kinzie's account book after his removal to Chicago in May, 1804, is that of La Lime.[359] In the same month he signed as witness the articles of indenture of Jeffrey Nash to Kinzie and Forsyth, "Merchants of Chicago."[360] When Cooper came to Fort Dearborn as surgeon in 1808, La Lime was living in one of the four houses on the north side of the river and acting as government Indian interpreter.[361] He continued to serve in this capacity until his death shortly before the massacre in the summer of 1812.
[357] Hurlbut, Chicago Antiquities, 55.