Abraham Lincoln, the Only U.S. President to Hold a Patent.

Abraham Lincoln filed for a patent on March 10, 1849, and received Patent №. 6469 for his "Device for Buoying Vessels Over Shoals" on May 22, 1849, while a Congressman in Illinois.

Abraham Lincoln's patent is a patented invention to lift boats over shoals and obstructions in a river. It is the only United States patent ever registered to a President of the United States. Lincoln conceived the idea of inventing a mechanism that would lift a boat over shoals and obstructions when on two different occasions the boat on which he traveled got hung up on obstructions. Documentation of this patent was discovered in 1997.

This device was composed of large bellows attached to the sides of a boat that was expandable due to air chambers. His successful patent application led to his drafting and delivering two lectures on the subject of patents while he was President. Lincoln was at times a patent attorney and was familiar with the patent application process as well as patent lawsuit proceedings. Among his notable patent law experiences was litigation over the mechanical reaper.

CLICK TO READ ─► THE ACTUAL PATENT LETTER.

The invention stemmed from Lincoln's experiences ferrying travelers and carrying freight on the Great Lakes and some Midwestern rivers.

In 1860, Lincoln wrote his autobiography and recounted that while in his late teens he took a flatboat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from his home in Indiana to New Orleans while employed as a hired hand. The son of the boat owner kept him company and the two went out on this new undertaking without any other helpers.

After moving to Macon County, Illinois, Lincoln made an additional trip a few years later on another flatboat that went from Beardstown, Illinois, to New Orleans. He, John D. Johnston (his stepmother's son), and John Hanks were hired as laborers by Denton Offutt to take a flatboat to New Orleans. They were to join Offutt at Springfield, Illinois. In early March 1831, the boys purchased a large canoe and traveled south on the Sangamon River. When they finally found him, they discovered Offutt had failed to secure a contract for a freight trip in Beardstown. Thus, purchasing a large canoe was an unnecessary expense. They then tried to cut their losses and worked for Offutt for twelve dollars per month cutting timber and building a boat at the Old Sangamon town (fifteen miles northwest of Springfield) on the Sangamon River. The new boat carried them to New Orleans based upon the original contract with Offutt.

As William Horman first wrote, "necessity is the mother of invention." Before Offutt's flatboat could reach the Illinois River, it got hung up on a milldam at the Old Sangamon town. As the boat was sinking, Lincoln took action, unloading some cargo to right the boat, then drilling a hole in the bow with a large auger borrowed from the local cooperage. After the water drained, he re-plugged the hole. With local help, he then portaged the empty boat over the dam and was able to complete the trip to New Orleans.

At the age of 23, Lincoln started his political career in New Salem. Near the top of his agenda was the improvement of navigation on the Sangamon River. Lincoln's law partner and biographer, William H. Herndon, also reports an additional incident at the time: a boat Lincoln was on got stranded on a shoal; the boat gradually swung clear and was dislodged after much manual exertion. This event, along with the Offutt's boat/milldam incident, prompted Lincoln to start thinking about how to lift vessels over river obstructions and shoals. He eventually came up with an idea for inflatable flotation. Patent №. 6469 was awarded to Abraham Lincoln on May 22, 1849, while still a Congressman in Illinois. Called "Buoying Vessels Over Shoals," Lincoln envisioned a system of waterproof fabric bladders that could be inflated when necessary to help ease a stuck ship over such obstacles. When crew members knew their ship was stuck, or at risk of hitting a shallow, Lincoln's invention could be activated, which would inflate the air chambers along the bottom of the watercraft to lift it above the water's surface, providing enough clearance to avoid a disaster. As part of the research process, Lincoln designed a scale model of a ship outfitted with the device. This model (built and assembled with the assistance of a Springfield, Ill., mechanic named Walter Davis) is on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

After reporting to Washington for his two-year term in Congress (beginning March 1847), Lincoln retained Zenas C. Robbins, a patent attorney. Robbins most probably had drawings done by Robert Washington Fenwick, his apprentice artist. Robbins processed the application, which became Patent №. 6469 on May 22, 1849. However, it was never produced for practical use. There are doubts as to whether it would have actually worked: It "likely would not have been practical," stated Paul Johnston, curator of maritime history at the National Museum of American History, "because you need a lot of force to get the buoyant chambers even two feet down into the water. My gut feeling is that it might have been made to work, but Lincoln's considerable talents lay elsewhere."

About that time, Lincoln took his son Robert Todd to the Old Patent Office Building model room to view the displays, sowing one of the youngster's fondest memories. Lincoln himself continued to have a special affinity for the site.

Abraham Lincoln's Patent.

CBS News Almanac.

Lincoln's invention was never manufactured and experts believed it would not have worked properly.

Abraham Lincoln had a strong attraction towards inventions and patents and as a lawyer was involved in patent-related litigation. Furthermore, he gave two famous speeches on inventions and patents.

The first speech (First Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions) was delivered on April 6, 1858, at the "Association of Young Men" in Bloomington, Illinois. The second speech, which would become the most popular one, was delivered on April 6, 1858, in Jacksonville, Illinois.  

The novel part begins by comparing the US youth at that time, which Lincoln calls “Young America” with the human beings of antiquity or “Old Fogy” represented by Adam, as the first man. According to Lincoln, the main difference between the “Young America” that had the world at its feet and the first human beings, who were at the mercy of nature, is the result of Discoveries, Inventions, and Improvements. These, in turn, are the result of observation, reflection, and experiment.”

Other Presidents have invented things too.
Thomas Jefferson was an inventor. Among Thomas Jefferson’s inventions were such devices as the macaroni machine that he invented in 1787, the swivel chair, the spherical sundial, the moldboard plow, and the cipher wheel, which was an ingenious way to allow people to code and decode messages. Jefferson’s cipher wheel was used until 1802, and then it was "reinvented" just prior to World War I and used by the US Army and other military services to send messages back and forth. Jefferson served as American minister to France in the 1780s and, as a result of his travels throughout Europe, was able to adapt some of the things he saw in Europe to benefit Americans as well.

Jefferson felt that all people should have access to new technology and, since he didn’t want others to be deprived of the benefits that new inventions bring, he never applied for a patent on any of his inventions. He considered patents to be an unfair monopoly. Several of Thomas Jefferson's inventions are still in use today; they deal mainly with agricultural and mechanical products. He also was responsible for introducing French fries into the United States.

President George Washington was also a successful inventor, and in 1772 he received a trademark for his brand of flour. 

But, Abraham Lincoln is the only President to hold a patent. 

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Italian Pharmacy in the Little Italy Neighborhood, Chicago. circa 1901

The Italian Pharmacy was located at Jefferson & Ewing Street (Ewing was renamed and renumbered in 1909), now Polk Street, which in 1901 was a part of the South Lawndale community and was in the Little Italy neighborhood.

The Italian pharmacy in the Little Italy Neighborhood, Chicago. circa 1901

The Little Italy neighborhood used to be larger, but like many other neighborhoods of Chicago was affected by the construction of new expressways. It lost a considerable chunk of land when the Eisenhower Expressway was built in the 1950s. It lost even more real estate when the University of Illinois-Chicago moved into the area in the 1960s.

The store across the street, Ronga Drugs, is listed in the "The Era Druggists' Directory, Volume 17," with an address of: 1031 W. Polk Street, Chicago. There seems to have been two Ewing Streets renamed in Chicago in 1909; one renamed to Polk Street, and the other renamed to Cabrini Street. Polk Street is ½ block north of Cabrini Street.

Reference: The Original Chicago Street Renaming Document of 1909
                   The Original Chicago Street Renumbering Document of 1909

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Ferris Wheel Park at the 1200 block of N. Clark St. (today, 2600 block of N. Clark St.), in Chicago, Illinois. (1896-1903)

Click the picture for a full-size image.

Though the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition closed on November 1, 1893, the Observation [Ferris] Wheel stood idle on the Midway until April 29, 1894, when a new site was found. It took 86 days and cost $14,833 (today $445,000) to dismantle it.

In 1895, the Wheel's inventor, George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., found a new site for the observation wheel on Chicago's North Side, in the Park West neighborhood of the Lincoln Park community and named it "Ferris Wheel Park." It was at Clark Street and Wrightwood Avenue, only 20 minutes by public transportation from the city's principal hotels and railway stations. There were very few motor vehicles during these early years.

The Directors sold bonds hoping to landscape the grounds, build a restaurant, a beer garden, a bandshell, a Vaudeville theater, and paint the wheel of its cars. Ferris' partner in the plan was Charles T. Yerkes, Jr. (whose involvement with the park is debatable), the transit magnate who owned streetcar lines adjacent to the site.

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The Duryea brothers created their first gasoline-powered "horseless carriage" in 1893. America's First Automobile Race took place in Chicago in 1895. 

Ferris chose the location of the “end of the line” and car barn (called the “Limits”) at Clark and Wrightwood exclusively to serve his proposed Ferris Wheel Amusement Park.

However, resistance to the project arose from the community and delayed but did not preclude its opening in the fall of that year. The community, nonetheless, could vote for the area closed to the sale of liquor, which doomed the planned beer garden.

Construction of the Ferris Wheel. The Second Church of Christ Scientist still stands at 2700 N Pine Grove Ave, Chicago.

An admission ticket for the ride confirms that a vaudeville program had been introduced as part of the attraction. Additionally, a photograph shows a sign advertising vaudeville shows. The address on the ticket, 1288 North Clark Street, is misleading on two counts regarding where the Wheel was actually located. 

In 1909, the city of Chicago undertook a street renaming and renumbering project. For instance, many of Hyde Park's streets obtained their modern names during this time. In this case, the street number "1288 North Clark" from the year 1896 translates to a location on the northeast side of the 2600 block of North Clark Street, near Wrightwood Avenue, after the renumbering process. 

Indeed, the whole strip of land from what is now 2619 to 2665 N. Clark was to be devoted to the enterprise.

FILM

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Amazing footage of the Ferris Wheel running in 1896 at Clark and Wrightwood in Lincoln Park, Chicago. The vantage point here is looking from the southwest corner of Wrightwood, northeast across Clark Street. Filmed by the Lumiere Brothers and is one of the first films ever shot in Chicago.

The ride, which some have jocularly claimed drew more complaints and lawsuits than patrons, experienced financial problems and was seized by the Cook County Sheriff in November 1896, just before 37-year-old George Washington Gale Ferris' death from tuberculosis in November. Ferris Wheel Park continued to remain open for business. 

As a result, the community of Lake View lost the opportunity to the Park West neighborhood of the Lincoln Park community. Shortly thereafter, and with vocal citizen opposition from a newly formed civic group called the Improvement and Protection Organization (IPO), the owners of the new park, which was in receivership, had to file for bankruptcy in 1900 due to a lack of local community support and general city patronage.

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One non-stop revolution at 2.5 mph took approximately 2 minutes.

The lack of support for the park was due to its location within a residential subdivision, and the residents of both communities of Lincoln Park and Lake View were not fans of the new owner of the park, Charles Tyson Yerkes, Jr., who owned the Chicago Electric Street Railway that owned and operated streetcars on Evanston Avenue (now Broadway) and Clark Street. 

For years, Mr. Yerkes tried to circumvent property owners by trying, through the city government, to acquire property for his company without due process. 

Imagine trying to locate a Six Flags amusement park in the middle of an urban residential street. 

The wheel remained until 1903 when it was dismantled and transported to the site of what would be its last hurrah. The Ferris wheel was brought to St. Louis, Missouri, for the 1904 World's Fair. "The Louisiana Purchase Exposition" at the St. Louis World's Fair was opened to the public on April 30, 1904. 

View looking northwest from the lakefront at Fullerton, Chicago. 1895

After the St. Louis Fair, the Ferris wheel was sold for scrap when a sale to Coney Island amusement park failed to materialize. It was destroyed with 100 pounds of dynamite (after several attempts), and the parts were taken away for salvage. Local legend says the Ferris Wheel's axle was buried with the rest of the fair's rubble in makeshift landfills in Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri.

THE 1893 WORLD'S FAIR LIBRARY

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

A very rare set of four Pre-World's Columbian Exposition postal cards from 1892, Chicago.

Below is a very rare complete set of four unused pre-Columbian postal cards. Published by the American Lithographic Company, New York. 

This complete set of four postal cards, from my personal collection, was issued in mid-1892 to invite world leaders and VIPs to the dedication ceremonies (held on October 21, 1892, even though the fairgrounds were not completed), and welcome them to the opening day of the World's Fair on May 1, 1893.

The official World's Fair seal is not present on these
four postal cards which included 1¢ postage.

When the fair opened in 1893, a set of 10 postal cards, 2 more were quickly added, for a 12-card set, which was the first commercially produced postcards to be sold to the general public in the United States.

Courtesy of my "Chicago Postcard Museum." 

Pre-World's Columbian Exposition 1893 - U.S. Naval Exhibit

Pre-World's Columbian Exposition 1893 - Fisheries Building

Pre-World's Columbian Exposition 1893 - Woman's Building

About the S.C. Skipton Stamp. Mr. Skipton was the first Editor of the Philatelic Journal of Great Britain. He was a rabid collector of postage stamps from around the world. Mr. Skipton always had a fondness for British stamps. During the last ten years of his life, he accumulated what may be considered the finest collection of the world's rarest postcards, in Great Britain, numbering over fifteen thousand specimens. Mr. Skipton used the ink stamp above to press on one of the postcards in each set he owned.

Pre-World's Columbian Exposition 1893 - Agricultural Building

The Back of the Pre-World's Columbian Exposition 1893 Postal Cards

Copyright © Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Women of Influence - Babette Mandel (1842-1945), Shaping Chicago History.

Babette Mandel around the
time of her wedding, 1871.

Babette Mandel, Great-niece of Michael Reese and wife of one of the founder of Mandel Brothers department store, came to Chicago at the age of four and grew up to become one of the foremost woman philanthropists of Chicago.

Her parents, Emanuel Frank and Elise Reese Frank, left Aufhausen in Bavaria in the summer of 1846, drawn by hopes of greater prosperity.

Michael Reese, an uncle then living in California, encouraged them to come to America and set aside funds for their support. After a journey by ship and stagecoach that took several weeks, the Franks and their ten children arrived in Chicago on Yom Kippur.

The family settled in a house on Clark Street north of Madison. Sadly, in 1855 Emanuel Frank was killed in an accident, and though she excelled at school, Babette was forced to spend much of her childhood helping to maintain the household.

On April 18, 1871, when she was 29, Babette married Emanuel Mandel. Emanuel’s brothers, Leon and Simon, had founded a dry goods store with Leon Klein in 1855. The business was reorganized as the Mandel Brothers store when Klein retired and Emanuel was brought in as a third partner.

The Mandel Brothers store was then located near Clark and Van Buren Streets. When the Chicago Fire destroyed the building in October 1871, just six months after Emanuel and Babette were married, the Mandels re-established their store on the South Side. 

In 1875 they moved to the Colonnade Building on State and Madison, owned by Marshall Field. Intent on building up State Street, Field persuaded the Mandels to stay by means of a generous, long-term lease, and soon the business was flourishing again. 

The Mandels were active members of Sinai Temple, and in 1888, at a meeting held at Sinai, Leon and Emanuel were among those who pledged money to found the Jewish Manual Training School (later the Jewish Training School). The idea behind the School was to give immigrants manual skills that would enable them to support themselves, while also promoting Americanization. Located on the West Side, the School taught cooking, sewing, woodworking, English and citizenship to Eastern European immigrants.

Babette Mandel was prominent among those who organized the School, at first serving as a director, and then as its president. The Jewish Training School closed in 1912; the inrush of immigrants that had made it so essential was largely over by then.

Chicago Lying-In Hospital and Dispensary was founded in 1895 with the help of Babette Mandel. She also served on its board. This was a maternity clinic at first housed in four rooms on Maxwell Street. It was later renamed the Chicago Maternity Center.

Inspired by the success of Hull House, Mrs. Mandel and others established the Maxwell Street Settlement in 1893 as a cultural center for newlyarrived Jewish immigrants. 

Babette Mandel was a leader in many other organizations as well: Chicago Women’s Aid, Sarah Greenebaum Lodge (United Order of True Sisters), the Chicago Section of the [National] Council of Jewish Women, and others. 

The achievement she is best known for, however, is the establishment of the West Side Dispensary in 1903. Originally opened in 1899 at Clinton and Judd Streets, this building was inadequate, and Babette Mandel gave $10,000 to reestablish it at Maxwell and Morgan Streets. Most of the patients were Russian or East European immigrants from the West Side. In 1910, she again gave a large sum of money to establish the Dispensary in new quartersand at this time, the Dispensary was dedicated to the memory of her husband, Emanuel Mandel, who had died in an accident in 1908. Mrs. Mandel continued to support the clinic with large gifts over the years, and in 1928 it was incorporated into Michael Reese Hospital as the Emanuel and Babette Mandel Clinic. 

Most of Babette Mandel’s charity work was carried out while she raised their three children: Frank, Edwin, and Rose. When she died on March 12, 1945, she left $50,000 to the Jewish Charities of Chicago and $25,000 each to Michael Reese Hospital and the Chicago Maternity Center, among other bequests. 

Her son Edwin became president of Mandel Brothers department store and was also president of Michael Reese Hospital. In 1960, Mandel Brothers was sold to the Weiboldt Corporation, which closed the store in the late 1970s or early 80s.

At a time when women were not expected to work outside the home, Babette Mandel, like many women of her generation, found a vocation and purpose that allowed her to extend her role as mother beyond the confines of the home. Her significance lies in the way she used her position of wealth and privilege to help the Jewish community at a time when immigrants were in desperate need.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

WWI Machine Gun Company, Chicago Regiment of Colored Soldiers, 8th Illinois Infantry.

WWI Machine Gun Company, Chicago Regiment of Colored Soldiers, 8th Illinois Infantry.

The Jewish Industrial and Manual Training School of Chicago.

The Jewish (sometimes written as Hebrew) Industrial and Manual Training School of Chicago, 554 W. 12th Place, Chicago, Illinois.

The Occident (American Jewish Advocate Monthly Periodical) - May 25, 1888.

THE BEGINNING
Monday evening, May 21, 1888, the newly elected board of directors met according to a call at the Sinai Temple's vestry rooms to elect executive officers for the ensuing term. Mr. Chas. Schwab was nominated for president and was unanimously elected. The secretary was instructed to cast one ballot for Mrs. Martin Bache for vice-president. Mr. J. L. Gatzert was nominated for treasurer and received the entire vote (his bond with two endorsements to be $50,000). Mr. Henry Greenebaum was next unanimously chosen as the corresponding secretary. Madame Joseph Spiegel received the unanimous vote for financial secretary.

Occident (American Jewish Advocate Monthly Periodical)   

November 13, 1891   

A VISIT TO THE JEWISH TRAINING SCHOOL
A magnificent institution richly endowed by Leon Mandel and the Jews of Chicago by voluntary contributions, situated on Judd between Clinton and Jefferson streets and in the midst of the Russian-Polish settlements; containing now some eight hundred children of both sexes and under the superintendency of Prof. Gabriel Bamberger.

The editor of The Occident paid a brief visit to this School last week and was most agreeably impressed with the system, order, decorum and general arrangement of the School, which is destined to reform and improve the new generation of these helpless people, who were driven from their homes and firesides in Russia. We noticed many interesting features that exhibit the acumen of a thorough pedagogue and, by progressive instruction, lead the hands and minds into channels of practical knowledge, even the youngest children from 3 to 5 years of age. A corps of able assistant teachers are at work in carrying out the discipline and systematic studies, which are so greatly simplified and improved that nothing can impede the acquisition of all elementary branches of education. It is not only a pleasure to observe the deft hands of those children in their work but one of the greatest blessings that humanity is capable of bestowing upon their less favored brethren. 

Eighteen spacious school rooms are now fully occupied by these children. From the most infantile apartments to the most advanced and higher branches of tuition, this School is a model. The manual training department is, however, the great aim and is destined to make the pupils not only self-sustaining in after years but useful members of society. The English language only is used. The kindergarten for the infantile is one of the most inductive of its character in our city. The sewing, dress-making, embroidering, mending and repairing departments are well nigh perfect. The modeling and designing in the clay department is a feature that in our youth was not known except in schools of art and sculpture, but even this is a part of this School to bring out all the genius and talent that children and youth possess. The greatest facilities are given in this School, and great care is taken in giving children physical exercise through gymnastics and calisthenics.

The ventilation and heating of the rooms are perfect. The scholar of this institution, when he graduates, may retain a record of his work from the day he enters until he leaves the institution. Professor Bamberger is the patentee of a triangular pencil used in this School and other institutions in this country, which has entirely supplanted the slate. It does away with smut and avoids the crating and scratching so annoying to many. Altogether, this Jewish Training School is a model of its kind in the Far West.

HISTORY
The School was founded with a generous grant of $20,000 from Mr. Leon Mandel in May of 1888 to maintain a kindergarten for children too young to attend public School, a kitchen garden and a sewing school for girls more advanced in years and particularly a manual training school where boys may learn to love work, find out for what kind of work they are best fitted, and receive that preparation and assistance which will make them intelligent, skillful, competent workmen, in that department best adapted to their abilities. It was a manual training school, not a trade school, where pupils received an excellent general education.

The School was a beautiful four-story building designed by Adler and Sullivan, made possible by private donations, located on Judd Street between Clinton and Jefferson, in the immediate neighborhood where most of the children lived.

The Russian Jews emigrated to Chicago in large numbers in the 1880s, and the purpose of the Jewish Training School was to teach the English language and familiarize the new arrivals with American methods and institutions. The School's curriculum was designed to equip the sons and daughters of the Jewish poor with the power of making a healthy, honest and honorable livelihood and with the desire of living in a respectable and self-respecting manner.

For economic and religious reasons, the newly arrived Russian Jews huddled together in what became known as the Ghetto until a city within a city was built up where, if the building had been removed, each person would have less than a square yard upon which to stand. Centuries of persecution and restrictions in occupations had rendered the newcomers unfit to grapple with the conditions under which they now lived.

The School's curriculum was based upon corrective measures and training in handwork.

Sewing class in 1892 at the Hebrew Manual Training School in Chicago, Illinois.

From its founding, the Jewish Training School accepted boys and girls, and one goal was to place before these children as many elementary trade activities as possible in order to find out their bent and then encourage and direct them along lines which their natural abilities seemed to trend. The academic work was to be as practical as possible and to be brought in touch with the handwork. For the girls, the School sought to connect them with the domestic and commercial worlds. The School building was destroyed by fire in 1953.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

#JewishThemed #JewishLife

W.C. Ritchie & Company, Chicago, Illinois. Fiber powder containers for World War I Ammunition.

Women working in ordnance plants in World War I: making fiber powder containers for 3" Stokes gun ammunition. Women crimping top on fibre containers at W.C. Ritchie & Co., Chicago, Illinois.

This manufacturer of paper boxes, founded by the Canadian-born William C. Ritchie, began to operate in Chicago in 1866 as Ritchie & Duck. Its name became W. C. Ritchie & Co. in 1881. By 1910, the company employed 1,100 workers at two Chicago box plants; it also owned a factory in nearby Aurora. Women working in the WWI effort, circa 1915. 

In 1955, W. C. Ritchie was purchased by the Stone Container Corp., another Chicago-based paper box manufacturer. 

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Abraham Lincoln's First Beard at 51 Years Old in November 1860. The Grace Bedell letter.

Abraham Lincoln's first whiskers. The photograph was taken Sunday, November 25, 1860, by Samuel G. Alschuler in Chicago, Illinois.

The picture of the President-elect with a half-beard is a unique portrait. It was preserved by Henry C. Whitney, a youthful attorney who had traveled the Illinois circuit with Lincoln. Some thirty years later, it turned up in the files of Chicago photographer C. D. Mosher and was saved from destruction by Herman Herbert Wells Fay, a custodian of the Lincoln Tomb.

On October 15, 1860, a few weeks before Lincoln was elected President of the United States, Grace Bedell sent him a letter from Westfield, New York, urging him to grow a beard to improve his appearance. Lincoln responded in a letter on October 19, 1860, making no promises. However, within a month, he grew a full beard.

Grace Bedell's letter:

The Honorary A. Lincoln

Dear Sir,  

My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin's. I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have yet got four brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. 

All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to [sic] but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chautauqua County New York. 

I must not write any more answer this letter right off. Good bye.

Grace Bedell

Lincoln made no promises in his reply to Bedell's letter:

Springfield, Ill Oct 19, 1860

Miss Grace Bedell,

My dear little Miss, your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received. I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters. I have three sons – one seventeen, one nine, and one seven, years of age. They, with their mother, constitute my whole family. As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a silly affectation if I were to begin it now?

Your very sincere well wisher. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Arthur J. Audy Home in Chicago was the largest juvenile jail in the world.

Chicago's juvenile justice system serves three distinct categories of children: delinquent, neglected and abused. In the nineteenth century, children lived alongside adults in Illinois' poorhouses, asylums, and jails. Between 1855 and the Great Fire of 1871, convicted boys were sent to the Chicago Reform School. After the fire destroyed the building, they went to the State Reform School at Pontiac. In 1899, the women of Hull House and the men of the Chicago Bar Association succeeded in passing legislation for a separate juvenile court system after a 30-year campaign.

Initially, boys were held in a cottage and stable at 233 Honore Street, while girls were housed at an annex of the Harrison Street police station. Although these arrangements were recognized as an improvement over city jail, escapes, attacks, and underfunding within the first two years led to the establishment of the Detention Home, operated by the Juvenile Court Committee (JCC) in conjunction with the city and county. Children were fed for eleven cents per day, but JCC philanthropists persuaded the Chicago Board of Education to provide a teacher in 1906, and by 1907 a new court building was established with facilities which separated delinquent boys, delinquent girls, and dependent children.

The Cook County Juvenile Court was the nation's first separate court for children. Under the principle of parens patriae, the state as parent, children's trials were informal hearings without legal counsel. In addition to the usual run of adult crimes, children could be charged with offenses such as truancy, incorrigibility, and sexual delinquency. But the creation of a distinct process for minors presented only a limited victory for the reformers. The court relied heavily upon institutionalization rather than the family preservation initially envisioned by reformers. On the court's twenty-fifth anniversary reformers lamented that it had become bureaucratic, unresponsive, and overburdened.

A 1935 Illinois Supreme Court decision restricted its power to those cases that the state's attorney chose not to prosecute in adult court.

Arthur J. Audy served in the Navy during World War II and upon his return, was superintendent of the center at Roosevelt Road and Ogden Avenue. As part of the job, he and his family were required to live in an on-site apartment. They had to be buzzed into their home by security, and outside their door was a hallway with doors that led to where the juveniles were housed. Arthur Audy suffered a heart attack and died in March 1950 at 38. Mrs. Audy briefly served as acting superintendent, and at the request of child welfare agencies, the Cook County board named the detention center after her husband.

A 1963 citizens committee report criticized the juvenile court for having limited and contradictory jurisdiction, overworked judges, and overburdened and underqualified staff, consisting predominantly of patronage appointees.

Audy Home Classroom, 1963.

In 1965 the state legislature overhauled the Illinois Juvenile Court Act, giving significant legal protections to minors, including the provision of a public defender. The 1967 U.S. Supreme Court Gault decision further extended the rights of accused juveniles to due process. During the next decade, however, public opinion demanded harsher treatment. A 1982 revision to the Illinois Habitual Juvenile Offender Act decreed that any juvenile aged 15 or older charged with murder, armed robbery, or sexual assault face prosecution in adult criminal court and, if convicted, commitment to the Illinois Department of Corrections.

While the scope of juvenile delinquency laws has been increasingly limited over the last three decades, the scope of child protection laws has greatly expanded. The 1975 Illinois Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act gave the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) great latitude in interpreting the "child's best interest." The number of abused and neglected minors entering the court system has skyrocketed, with more and more entering DCFS custody for protection from neglect. Reformers argued that children removed to state care received minimal levels of treatment and often languished for years in "temporary" foster placements. Lawsuits filed in 1986 against the Cook County Guardian and in 1991 against DCFS resulted in sweeping changes in personnel and policies.

In 1997 between 1,500 and 2,000 cases were heard every day, representing 25,000 active delinquency and 50,000 active abuse and neglect cases. Minority youths (95 percent) and males (90 percent) were disproportionately represented. Only 6 percent of delinquency cases involved serious violent offenders. Two-thirds of the court's caseload consisted of abuse and neglect cases, which reformers linked to increased rates of poverty, decline in high-wage jobs, and drastic cutbacks in welfare and social services for families and children.

Today's Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, located above the 31 courtrooms constituting Juvenile Court at 1100 S Hamilton Avenue has an official capacity of 500 youngsters awaiting delinquency adjudication or trial in adult criminal court. Popularly still known as the "Audy Home," this facility's overcrowding and economic distress, as well as questions about appropriate programming, punishment, and safety, continue to challenge reformers. The center's Nancy B. Jefferson School, operated by the Chicago Board of Education, teaches 500 detained children each day. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Livery Stable on First Street in Marseilles, Illinois. 1901

Andrew and Mary Jane (Fowler) LeRette at the Livery Stable on First Street (now First Ave.), Marseilles, Illinois. 1901

Looking north on State Street from Madison, Chicago

Looking north on State Street from Madison. Mandel Brothers store is under construction. On the left is the Boston Store. circa 1912

The History of Jewish Life in Chicago.

Jews came to Chicago from virtually every country in Europe and the Middle East, but especially from Germany and Eastern Europe. Unlike most other immigrant groups, Jews left the Old Country with no thoughts of ever returning to lands where so many had experienced poverty, discrimination, and even sporadic massacres.

Meyer Levinson is standing in front of his butcher shop at 326 Maxwell Street in Chicago. Circa 1903. Today, this address would place the butcher shop just west of Campus Pkwy, in the athletic field of the University of Illinois Chicago campus.

Jews began trickling into Chicago shortly after the town was incorporated in 1833. 

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Chicago was Incorporated as a town on August 12, 1833, and Incorporated as a city on March 4, 1837.

A century later, Chicago's 270,000 Jews (about 9 percent of the city's population) were outnumbered only in New York and Warsaw. By the end of the twentieth century, only about 30 percent of Jewish people remained within city limits.

Wittenberg Matzoh Co. 1326 South Jefferson, Chicago. 1919

Chicago's first permanent Jewish settlers arrived in the mid-1830s from Central Europe, mainly from the German states. A few lived briefly in eastern cities before being attracted to the burgeoning city of Chicago. These early settlers included Henry Horner, whose grandson of the same name would become the first Jewish governor of Illinois. 

Many of these settlers started as street peddlers with packs on their backs and later opened small stores downtown. From these humble beginnings, they later established such companies as Florsheim, Spiegel, Alden's, Mandel Brothers, Albert Pick & Co., A. G. Becker, Brunswick, Inland Steel, Kuppenheimer, and Hart, Schaffner & Marx.

Chicago's first synagogue, Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue (KAM), was founded at the corner of Lake and Wells in 1847 by a group of Jewish immigrants from the same general region of Germany. 

The old Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue, Chicago, Illinois.

By 1852, about 20 Polish Jews had become discontented enough to break off from KAM and founded Chicago's second congregation, Kehilath B'nai Sholom, a more Orthodox congregation than the older KAM. In 1861, the second significant secession from KAM occurred. This splinter group, led by Rabbi Bernhard Felsenthal, formed the Sinai Reform Congregation, meeting in a church near the corner of Monroe and LaSalle Streets.

In 1859, the United Hebrew Relief Association (UHRA) was established by some 15 Jewish organizations, including several B'nai B'rith lodges and several Jewish women's organizations. 

After the fire of 1871, Jews moved out of the downtown area, mainly southward, settling eventually in the fashionable lakefront communities of Kenwood, Hyde Park, and South Shore. Wherever they settled, they established needed institutions, including Michael Reese Hospital, the Drexel Home (for aged Jews), and the social and civic Standard Club.

In the late 1870s, Eastern European Jews, mainly from Russian and Polish areas, started arriving in Chicago in large numbers. They came primarily from shtetlach (small rural villages or towns), and by 1930, they constituted over 80 percent of Chicago's Jewish population. They settled initially in one of the poorest parts of the city, the Maxwell and Halsted streets area on Chicago's Near Westside. 

Maxwell Street Market, Chicago.

Maxwell Street Market resembled a community in an Old World SHTETL (a small Jewish village or town in Eastern Europe) with numerous Jewish institutions, restaurants, merchants, and about 40 synagogues and a bazaar-like outdoor market called Maxwell Street Market that attracted customers from the entire Chicago area. They eked out a living as peddlers, petty merchants, artisans, and factory laborers, especially in the garment industry, where many men and women became ardent members, organizers, and leaders in several progressive unions.

Maxwell Street Market, Chicago. 1904

The Eastern European Jews differed from the German Jews in their cultural background, language, dress, demeanor, and economic status. Until the mid-twentieth century, the two maintained distinct neighborhoods and institutions. Friction also owed to differing religious practices, as the Orthodox newcomers encountered a German Jewish community increasingly oriented toward Reform Judaism.

A sense of kinship, however, and the fear that poverty and the seemingly exotic culture of European Jews might provoke anti-Semitism led Chicago's German Jews (like their counterparts in other American cities) to provide a foundation upon which the newcomers could build lives as Chicagoans. These institutions included educational (Jewish Training School, opened in 1890), medical (Chicago Maternity Center, 1895), and recreational (Chicago Hebrew Institute, 1903) facilities that offered practical resources while helping to speed up the Americanization of the new immigrants. Julius Rosenwald, a prominent business executive and philanthropist, was one of these institutions' chief organizers and financial contributors.

Education and entrepreneurship provided many Jews a route from the Maxwell Street area by 1910. A small number joined the German Jews on the South Side; some moved into the north lakefront communities of Lake View, Uptown, and Rogers Park; more headed northwest into Humboldt Park, Logan Square, and Albany Park. The most significant number moved west into the North Lawndale area, which soon became the largest Jewish community in the history of Chicago, numerically and institutionally. 

By the 1930s, North Lawndale housed 60 synagogues (all but 2 Orthodox), a very active community center, the Jewish People's Institute, the Hebrew Theological College, the Douglas Library, where Golda Meir worked for a short time, and numerous Zionist, cultural, educational, fraternal, and social service organizations and institutions.

The old Anshe Roumania Synagogue building, North Lawndale, Chicago, Illinois.

After World War II, increasing prosperity and government housing benefits to returning war veterans allowed growing numbers of Chicago Jews to fulfill their desire for single-family houses. Upwardly mobile Jews started moving out of their old communities into higher-status West Rogers Park (West Ridge) on the far North Side.

By the end of the twentieth century, West Rogers Park had emerged as the largest Jewish community in the city. More than 30,000 Jews were Orthodox, and the rhythm of Orthodox life remained evident, from the daily synagogue prayer services to the numerous Orthodox institutions and the closing of Jewish stores on Devon Avenue for the Sabbath. Some of the recent 22,000 Russian Jewish immigrants also settled there. 

Tel-Aviv Bakery, 2944 West Devon Avenue, West Ridge Community, West Rogers Park Neighborhood, Chicago.

Other Jewish areas in the city included the apartment and condominium complexes paralleling the northern lake shore and a small community in the Hyde Park area.

Many Jews joined the postwar migration to suburbia. Housing discrimination had limited suburbanization in the early years, although in the early 1900s, small numbers of Jews had moved into some of the suburbs that were open to them. The most concentrated movement of Jews into the suburbs followed World War II with the removal of restrictive housing covenants and increased affluence. 

West Ridge Community, West Rogers Park Neighborhood, Chicago, Illinois.

Approximately 70 percent of the estimated 270,000 Jews in the Chicago metropolitan area in the 1990s lived in the suburbs, compared to just 5 percent in 1950. Most were concentrated in such northern suburbs as Skokie, Lincolnwood, Glencoe, Highland Park, Northbrook, and Buffalo Grove.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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