The next day after Chicago's first wedding the family of Kingsbury at Mackinac was gladdened by the appearance of a new daughter.[392] In announcing the event to Colonel Hunt at Detroit, the happy father hopes to hear of the latter being in a similar situation, unless he happens to prefer that Mrs. Hunt should present him with a son. Shortly afterward Kingsbury ordered from Detroit, by the first vessel in the spring, some walnut and cherry boards and a cow and calf.[393] He had already requested Whistler to send him some walnut planks from Chicago.[394] Whistler responded by sending him two, but explained that these were all he could procure and that he had not yet made a single table for himself.[395]
[392] Kingsbury Papers, Kingsbury to Hunt, November 11, 1804.
[393] Ibid., Kingsbury to Clemson, November 21, 1804.
[394] Ibid., Kingsbury to Whistler, October 16, 1804.
[395] Ibid., Whistler to Kingsbury, November 3, 1804.
Less pleasing than the marriages and births are the reports of fever and other ills which beset the occupants of the garrisons in the new country. Fort Dearborn was only a year old when Whistler reported that more than half of his men had been ill. Whipple at Fort Wayne, writing in September, 1804, praises his new surgeon; since his arrival the sick list which had numbered twenty-five has been materially reduced.[396] "We have all been sick since you left this," wrote Clemson from Detroit in October of the same year.[397] The writer had not yet recovered from the severe attack of the fever, but expected with the assistance of the frosty nights to regain his strength. At the same time Lieutenant Rhea's little garrison on the Maumee was in a desperate condition. On July 31 he reported that in addition to himself ten men out of his force of twenty-one were ill.[398] A month later the number of sick men remained about the same; the wife of a corporal was at the point of death, and Rhea had sent to the River Raisin for a physician, expecting to pay the expense himself.[399] He appeals urgently for help and for removal. The "musketoes" are so thick that a well person cannot sleep at night; the place was never intended "for any Christian to be posted at."
[396] Ibid., Whipple to Kingsbury, September 1, 1804.
[397] Ibid., Clemson to Kingsbury, October 27, 1804.
[398] Ibid., Rhea to Kingsbury, July 31, 1804.
[399] Ibid., Rhea to Kingsbury, August 31 and September 8, 1804.