Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable Founder of Chicago Illinois 1745-1818

Biography
Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable first arrived on the western shores of Lake Michigan around 1779. Born in Saint-Marc, Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), he built the first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river just east of the present Michigan Avenue Bridge on the north bank.[3]

Of African and French descent, he may have been born as early as the 1730s and no later than 1745, to a slave named Suzanna and a French pirate mate named Pointe du Sable who served on the Black Sea Gull.[4] Suzanna may have been killed in a Spanish raid on Haiti. Perhaps Jean Baptiste escaped by swimming out to his father's ship. After his father sent him to study at a Catholic school in France, du Sable and a friend, Jacques Clamorgan, traveled to Louisiana and then to Michigan, where he married a Potawatomi woman name Kittahawa (fleet-of-foot). To marry her, the twenty-five-year-old Jean Baptiste had to become a member of her tribe. He took an eagle as his tribal symbol.[5] The Potawatomi called him "Black Chief," and he became a high-ranking member of the tribe. They had a son and daughter, Jean and Susanne. Du Sable's granddaughter, Eulalia, was the first non-Indian born in Chicago.

Before it was anything else, Chicago was a trading center. As its first permanent resident, du Sable operated the first elaborate fur-trading post during the two decades before his departure in 1800.[6] Du Sable built his first house in the 1770s on the land now known as Pioneer Court, thirty years before Fort Dearborn was established on the banks of the Chicago River.[4] By the time he sold to John Kinzie's frontman, Jean La Lime, for 6,000 livres,[7] his property included a house, two barns, horse-drawn mill, bakehouse, poultry house, dairy and a smokehouse.[8] His home was a 22 by 40 foot log cabin filled with fine furniture and paintings. In 1913, Milo M. Quaife, an historical librarian with the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, discovered the bill of sale from du Sable to Jean La Lime archived in Detroit, Michigan. This document outlined all of the property du Sable owned as well as many of his personal artifacts.[9]

During the Revolutionary War, he was imprisoned briefly by the British at Detroit, Michigan, on suspicion of being a US spy.[10] He also helped George Rogers Clark in his capture of Vincennes during the war.[4] From the summer of 1780 until May of 1784, du Sable managed the Pinery, a huge tract of woodlands claimed by British Lt. Patrick Sinclair on the St. Clair River in eastern Michigan. Du Sable and his family lived at a cabin at the mouth of the Pine River in what is now the city of St. Clair.[11]

In 1800, du Sable left Chicago for Peoria, Illinois, where he lived for a decade.[12] Du Sable moved to St. Charles in 1813, where his granddaughter lived. He died in 1818, the year Illinois became a state, and was buried in St. Charles. He was buried in an unmarked grave in St. Borromeo Cemetery. A granite marker was erected in 1968 at his grave.[4] The deed books in the office of the St. Charles County Recorder of Deeds do not support the assertions of some authors that du Sable sold land to Alexander McNair, who would become the first governor of Missouri.[13]


[edit] Legacy and honors

US Postage Stamp 1987Du Sable High School is a Bronzeville high school opened in 1934. A few famous Du Sable attendees/graduates include: Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Harold Washington, and Redd Foxx. Dr. Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, a prominent African-American artist and writer and co-founder with her husband of the Du Sable Museum of African-American History, taught at the school for twenty-three years.

The Du Sable Museum of African American History, on Chicago's South Side, is named in his honor. Chicago commemorated du Sable's homestead in 1912 with a plaque on the corner of Kinzie and Pine Streets. Du Sable appears in a 1965 frieze created for the Illinois Centennial Building.[14]

Du Sable Harbor is located in the heart of downtown Chicago at the foot of Randolph Street.

Du Sable Park is an urban park (3.24 acres) in Chicago currently awaiting redevelopment. It was originally announced in 1987 by then Mayor Harold Washington. The park is to be named after du Sable.


du Sable National Historic LandmarkJean Baptiste Pointe du Sable homesite is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, as a National Historic Landmark on May 11, 1976. It is located at what is now 401 N. Michigan Avenue in the Near North Side community area of Chicago. Currently the 35-story Equitable Building is located there.[15]

In recognition of his pioneering role, the US Postal Service issued a Black Heritage Series, 22-cent stamp, in honor of the entrepreneur and diplomat on February 20, 1987.

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