The Shipwreck of the "Silver Spray" rests a stone's throw from Hyde Park's 49th street beach in Chicago.

On July 15, 1914 -- almost exactly a year before the SS Eastland disaster -- the Silver Spray, a 109-foot-long ferry, set sail to pick up 200 University of Chicago students and take them to Gary, Indiana, to tour the steel mills.

Unfortunately the trip never came to pass as the Silver Spray ran aground on Lake Michigan's Morgan Shoal, a massive underwater rock formation that was formed millions of years ago by glacial activity. 

Morgan Shoal is a million square foot dolomite shelf left over from glacial action millions of years ago near what would eventually be Lake Shore Drive at 49th Street. The wave action at this unique spot along the shoreline creates the city’s only pebble beach and a tricky navigational spot for boats.

Once it was apparent that the ship was doomed, the captain and the seven-man crew decided to remain with their ship, not even halting the preparation of the evening's stew.

Three days later, after various vessels attempted to pull the Silver Spray free of the limestone reef, the crew was taken ashore. Attempts to salvage the ship only caused it to slam against the rocks, and the wooden steamship quickly broke in two.

A Chicago Examiner comic from July 16, 1914, the day after the Silver Spray hit Morgan Shoal and two days before waves finally broke the ship apart.

In addition, the boiler had been left on and the ship caught fire as it sank, making for quite the spectacle. Groups of spectators on shore began collecting the wooden debris as it floated in and burnt them in large bonfires. It must have been a delightful time.

The remains of the Silver Spray can still be seen peeking out of the waters of Lake Michigan. While most of the wooden structure is long since gone, the ship's metal boiler still juts out of the water.

The boiler of the Silver Spray.

The Silver Spray is the closest shipwreck to the shoreline of Chicago and is thus a popular diving spot, along with Morgan Shoals in general.

Some swimmers even paddle out to the wreck and sunbathe on its exposed angle. For better or worse, the Silver Spray seems to be bringing more joy to people in its death than it ever did during its operation.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Kate Sturges Buckingham was one of the great women in Chicago's history.

Kate Buckingham died in her home at 2450 North Lakeview Avenue on December 12, 1937, at 79. She was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Zanesville, Ohio, alongside her parents, brother, and sister.

Kate Sturges Buckingham

In announcing Miss Kate Sturges Buckingham's passing, the Chicago Tribune noted, "She was godmother to the Art Institute; the collections for which it's most famous were her gifts. She was the godmother of the opera; at the time of her death, she was a guarantor. She was godmother to some 200 or more music and art students. She was a heavy donor to the Field Museum, numerous Chicago charities, and many nameless Chicagoans."

Despite being one of the wealthiest women in the United States and one of the most generous individuals in a city blessed with a long procession of altruistic citizens, Miss Buckingham preferred that no credit come to her for her many contributions. Later in life, she ordered her name removed from the Social Register, severely limiting her circle of friends.

Miss Buckingham was born on August 3, 1858, the eldest daughter of Ebenezer and Lucy Buckingham in Zanesville, Ohio. Her mother's father, Solomon Sturges, brought the family to Chicago in the 1850s. At that time, the Sturges and Buckingham families controlled a string of grain elevators in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and along the Erie Canal. It was sound business sense to move to Chicago, and in 1850, Miss Buckingham's great uncle, Alvah Buckingham, constructed the first grain elevator in the city.

Everything that the Buckingham and Sturges families owned was obliterated in the Great Fire of 1871, their homes on the north side of the city, their grain elevators along the river, the first of many tragedies that would become a motif that ran through Miss Buckingham's life.

A second Chicago Fire in 1874 gave rise to one of the earliest examples of Miss Buckingham's generosity. After that second conflagration, the 15-year-old Kate launched a drive to raise funds for a Christmas party to bring some measure of joy to children in the Cook County hospital.

The Tribune describes the effort... "On Christmas Eve, the Christmas tree, heavily laden with gifts, was set up in the children's ward, and its many candles were lit. Tragedy swiftly followed. The burning candles started a fire through some mishap, and the tree and all its Christmas largesse burned down. Bur young Miss Buckingham, nothing deterred, set forth to raise a new amount of money, enough for gifts for each child. And did."

The family relocated their home to Prairie Avenue, the city's most select street, and the family business, J & E Buckingham, prospered beyond measure. In 1882, Miss Buckingham's father also built a grand home in Lake Forest. Still, despite its location on a bluff above Lake Michigan, the family continued to make its principal home in Chicago.

It was in the Prairie Avenue home that Kate and her sister, Lucy Maud, were educated. It was in this home that Lucy Buckingham died in 1889, and it was there that Kate's sister became increasingly incapacitated. From the house, Clarence Buckingham, Kate's brother, and their father expanded the family's enterprises to include banking, insurance, steel manufacturing, and real estate.

The family's affiliation with the Art Institute began in the 1890s when Clarence, impressed by the Japanese art exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, began collecting Japanese prints. Ebenezer died in 1911, Clarence died just over a year later, and Lucy Maud lived in increasingly poorer health until 1920. All the losses must have further isolated Kate, a woman left alone in a house that her mother, father, sister, and brother had shared for her whole adult life.

She continued to collect art, though, following her brother's lead. Clarence had been a governing member of the Art Institute of Chicago for three decades and a member of the Board of Trustees for a dozen. [Scultz & Hast] After her sister's death, Kate Buckingham gave her entire collection of Japanese prints, etchings and engravings, Chinese pottery and porcelain, Persian miniatures, Chinese ritual bronzes, and Italian silver, and English lusterware to the institute. [The Frick Collection.]

She also furnished the Art Institute's Gothic room in memory of her sister and finished the Jacobean Room at the museum in the name of her parents. In 1925, she also gave her brother's entire collection of fourteen hundred sheets of Japanese prints to the museum.

Miss Buckingham also wrote a check to the Art Institute to be used for a great monument to Alexander Hamilton. Of course, her most memorable contribution was the donation that allowed the construction of the great [Buckingham] Fountain in Grant Park, dedicated to her brother, along with a $300,000 endowment to provide for its maintenance.

The Buckingham Fountain was donated by Kate Buckingham in honor of her brother Clarence in 1927. The fountain was the largest in the world when it was built and is still one of the largest. Edward H. Bennett designed the monument with French sculptor Marcel Loyau and engineer Jacques H. Lambert.

The fountain was meant to represent Lake Michigan and the four states that touch the lake - Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. The fountain is constructed of Georgia pink marble. To give a vision of the fountain's size - the bottom pool is 280 feet in diameter, and the 2nd basin is 103 feet. The upper basin is 25 feet wide, and the basin is 25 feet above the lower basin.

But here is something else that resulted from her generosity, which most people are unaware of. On February 12, 1912, Kate Buckingham bought a property of 81 acres in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. It was not far from where a 55-room "cottage," which her father had built near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, stood until it burned to the ground in 1899.

On the new piece of land, Kate Buckingham built Bald Hill Farm. After her death, the farm, to which another 80 acres had been added, was sold to Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky. Mr. Koussevitzky was the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a man who dreamed of creating a summer musical festival for the symphony. In 1978, after the death of Koussevitzky, the organization purchased the property, and it now lies at the heart of the Tanglewood Music Festival.

When she died, Kate Buckingham left a half million dollars to friends and relatives. She left another $126,000 to her maid, chauffeur, children of her caretaker, her nurses, doormen, and elevator men at the Lakeview cooperative building. In today's dollars, those gifts would total over nine million dollars. She left another $3.1 million for art and cultural organizations, including two million for the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Tribune article that conveyed the news of Kate Buckingham's death ended with "a well-authenticated anecdote" dealing with "one of her rare visits to the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, in which she was an important stockholder."

"On this occasion," the story went, "she stopped at the cashier's cage to get money. She had no identification papers, and the teller asked if anyone in the bank could identify her. She cast a brief, flashing glance around the nearby desks. 'They're all dead,' she snapped."

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Chicago's First Roller Skating Rink.

The first roller skating rink in Chicago was the "Chicago Roller Skating Rink" located at Congress and Michigan which is in the Chicago Loop area. It opened in November 1880.

Rumor has it that the Chicago Roller Skating Rink was the roller skating venue during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition because there was no rink on the fairgrounds.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

A Manual 'Ferris' Wheel at the Old Catlin Illinois Fairgrounds Kills a Young Girl in 1876.

The Ferris wheel[1] originally called 'Ups and Downs,' among other names, was without power and was operated by men who manually pushed the cars around as they came to them. The directors of the fair were afraid the “contraption,” as they termed it, was unsafe and refused to give the owner permission to operate it on the fairgrounds.

The man who had charge of the wheel placed it just outside the fence which enclosed the fairground and on the first day an attempt was made to operate it — it collapsed.

An 'Ups and Downs' ride at an unknown location. The arms extend a couple of
feet beyond the carriages served as handles for manually turning the ride.

One person, a young girl, was killed and several other people were injured. The owner escaped by mounting a horse and riding swiftly away. He was never apprehended and escaped facing a charge of manslaughter.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

---

[NOTE] The first Catlin Fair was a one-day event organized in 1850 and held on the site of the First Presbyterian Church. It was moved for the third year to Butler’s Point [2], and continued there for 40 more years without profit. 

[1] Although this article is about 1876, I use the term "Ferris wheel" (aka Observation Wheel) which was 1st coined at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, is used for the benefit of the readers visualization. 

[2] Butler's Point - James Butler settled on land which lay just to the west of Catlin in 1819 and the area became known as Butler's Point. When a railway station was built where Catlin is now located, trade and residences drifted to better facilities, and Butler's Point was lost in Catlin. This village was named Catlin on account of that being the name of one of the officers of the Wabash railroad. 

A downtown Chicago museum no one seems to know about, and, you can just walk-in!

The Chicago Cultural Center at 78 East Washington Street opened in 1897 as Chicago's first central public library. 

The Main Chicago Public Library. Circa 1898

The building is a Chicago Landmark that houses the city's official reception venue where the Mayor of Chicago has welcomed Presidents and royalty, diplomats and community leaders. It is located in the Loop, across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park. It was converted in 1977 to an arts and culture center at the instigation of Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Lois Weisberg.

The city's central library is now housed across the Loop in the spacious, post-modernist Harold Washington Library Center at 400 South State Street which opened in 1991.

The Harold Washington Library Center.

As the nation's first free municipal cultural center, the Chicago Cultural Center is considered one of the most comprehensive arts showcases in the United States. Each year, the Chicago Cultural Center features more than 1,000 programs and exhibitions covering a wide range of the performing, visual and literary arts. It also serves as headquarters for the Chicago Children's Choir.

The stunning landmark building is home to two magnificent stained-glass domes, as well as free music, dance and theater events, films, lectures, art exhibitions and family events. Completed in 1897 as Chicago’s central public library, the building was designed to impress and to prove that Chicago had grown into a sophisticated metropolis. The country’s top architects and craftsmen used the most sumptuous materials, such as rare imported marbles, polished brass, fine hardwoods, and mosaics of Favrile glass, mother-of-pearl and colored stone, to create an architectural showplace.

Located on the south side of the building, the world’s largest stained glass Tiffany dome ― 38 feet in diameter with some 30,000 pieces of glass ― was restored to its original splendor in 2008.

On the northside of the building is a 40-foot-diameter dome with some 50,000 pieces of glass in an intricate Renaissance pattern, designed by Healy & Millet.

FURTHER READING: The History of the Main Chicago Public Library.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

---

PHOTO GALLERY

---

On a personal note: 

In the late 1960s I visited the Main Chicago Library to complete a grammar school assignment. For those who remember, there were two hallways running north-south from entrance to entrance. In those hallways were displays of cultural arts; sometimes paintings, sometimes display cabinets lined both hallways with collections of "stuff." I was lucky enough to be there during the exhibit of Cracker Jack (1896) toys thru time. I was a vast collection, over 2,000 toys, and took all the cabinets in both long hallways. 

Pot Metal Toys

Cracker Jack originally included a small "mystery" novelty item referred to as a "Toy Surprise" in each box. The tagline for Cracker Jack was originally "Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts and a prize." Prizes were included in every box of Cracker Jack beginning in 1912. Early "toy surprises" included rings, plastic figurines, booklets, stickers, temporary tattoos, and decoder rings.

1960s-70s Plastic Toys

The prizes attained pop-culture status with the catch-phrase "came in a Cracker Jack box," particularly when applied sarcastically to engagement and wedding rings of dubious investment value.

The Bloody Autumn at Nauvoo (Mormon Town), Illinois in 1845.

---

In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

---

Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon Church in 1830, lived with his followers in Missouri, where they had various conflicts with locals, including an armed skirmish with the state militia. In 1838, Governor Lilburn Boggs signed a military order directing that the Mormons be expelled or exterminated: "The Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be driven from the state or exterminated, if necessary, for the public good."

Smith and the Mormons fled across the Mississippi to Nauvoo, Illinois (aka Mormon Town), quickly becoming the second most populous town in the 1840s. The population was such that Nauvoo rivaled Chicago for the "biggest city in Illinois." One statistical comparison is that in the fall of 1845, Nauvoo's violent crime rate likely surpassed Chicago's.

Nauvoo: The Mormon Temple is in the background. Date unknown.

In 1845, crime in Chicago was such that the city had only four men responsible for keeping the peace: one marshal and three assistants. The Nauvoo police force, in January of 1845, numbered 500 men. While there were extenuating circumstances in Nauvoo necessitating many peacekeepers, in the fall of 1845, Nauvoo's policemen were often the source of violent crime.

There were conflicts and tensions in Nauvoo as well. When a local newspaper printed editorials claiming that the religious leader was a fraud, Smith sent a group of followers to destroy the newspaper office. He was then arrested and sent to jail, where a lynch mob tracked him down and killed him.

The Mormon Temple in Nauvoo, Illinois. c.1845

Brigham Young quickly took command of the church and its followers and tried to stifle dissent and banish his rivals. The killing of Phineas Wilcox was part of his consolidation of power. 

In his book, One Nation Under Gods, Richard Abanes details some of these events from September 1845. He writes:

“A halt to the violent conflict between Mormons and anti-Mormons lasted but a brief period of time after Smith was killed. Armed mobs of Illinoisans, incited by endless newspaper articles covering Mormon issues, soon began to conduct raids against isolated church settlements. Mormons were threatened, Latter-day Saints' homes were burned, rumors about various Mormon atrocities circulated, and militias were called out by the governor. Church dissenters and critics, meanwhile, continued to expose aspects of Mormonism that church leaders did not want revealed. The Saints retaliated with verbal intimidation, religious condemnation, and acts of physical violence… More disturbing were the many murders, vicious beatings, and intimidating assaults perpetrated by the Nauvoo police against perceived enemies of the church. Policeman Alan J. Stout summed up the rational of the Saints on these matters, explaining that to his mind such activity was nothing more than avenging the blood of Joseph and Hyrum. In reference to the Mormon dissenters remaining in Nauvoo, Stout expressed a common sentiment: ‘I feel like cutting their throats.’” 

Here are just a few accounts of those violent crimes from September of 1845:

On September 14, the Nauvoo police had three men flogged because they were not in good fellowship with the church.

On September 16, Phineas Wilcox was stabbed to death by fellow Mormons in Nauvoo because he was believed to be a Christian spy. Wilcox was last seen as he was led toward the Masonic Hall by three Mormons. Wilcox's stepfather, Orrin Rhodes, inquired after him and searched for him for a week, concluding, "Wilcox has been murdered by… Mormons."

Phineas Wilcox

Frank Worrell, a Carthage Jail guard who failed to protect Joseph Smith, was murdered on September 16 and shot out of his saddle by Porter Rockwell.

Again on September 16, Rockwell also killed four unnamed "anti-Mormons" at Highland Branch, near Warsaw.

Andrew Daubenheyer disappeared on the road to Carthage on September 18. He was later found buried in a shallow grave near a campsite on the Carthage road "with a musket ball through the back of his head." In due time Daubenheyer was given a proper burial with a headstone that reads, "Killed by the Mormons."

The Andrew Daubenheyer Headstone.

Later in September, "several Saints captured a young man called McBracking," accused of burning Mormon homes. McBracking's friends found his body the next day and reported, "After shooting him in two or three places, they cut his throat from ear to ear, stabbed him through the heart, cut off one ear & horribly mutilated other parts of his body."

Mormon apostles Heber C. Kimball and Orson Hyde ordered the killing of apostate Lambert Symes, who subsequently "disappeared without a trace."

Nauvoo's bloody autumn of 1845 could have been much worse, but as it was, it clearly demonstrated that the Mormons and non-Mormons of Hancock County would never learn to live together in peace. "Therefore," wrote Brigham Young, "we propose to leave this county next spring, for some point so remote, that there will not need to be a difficulty with the people and ourselves…." 

Tensions with other communities continued to escalate, and a year later, over 2,000 armed anti-Mormons marched on Nauvoo. Young decided it was no longer wise to stay in the area, leading his flock west in 1846. 

Completing a treacherous thousand-mile exodus, an ill and exhausted Brigham Young and fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints arrived in Utah's Great Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The First-Ever Brownie was invented in Chicago by Bertha Palmer for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

Like Twinkies, deep-dish and pan pizzas, brownies were also born in Chicago. Credit for inventing the brownie goes to Bertha Honoré Palmer, Potter Palmer's wife. Here's what happened. The Board of Directors of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition contacted Mrs. Potter to ask her to concoct a delicious and transportable (eat while walking in the heat) dessert. Mrs. Potter went right to work in the Palmer House kitchen, brainstorming. 

Bertha Honoré Palmer

It was named the brownie, perhaps because of the deep dark chocolate color. Unlike other brownie recipes, which started appearing in 1904 and specified that butter and sugar were first creamed before being combined with a small amount of melted chocolate, the Palmer House brownie is made with more than a pound of melted chocolate and a pound of melted butter. The finished brownie is also lightly glazed with apricot jelly. 

A combination of chocolate fudge and brownie, crispy-chewy on the edges, ultra-dense and chocolatey. 

It's best served frozen or very cold… otherwise, gooey things happen.

THIS IS THE ORIGINAL 1893 RECIPE 

Over the years, the Palmer House made some tweaks and changes. You can see the differences in the Plamer House online recipe, no matter their claim that they are presenting the original recipe. THIS IS THE ORIGINAL RECIPE, verified via research. To experience what thousands of 1893 Fairgoers actually tasted for the first time in their lives, a chocolate brownie.

WARNING   If you deviate from this recipe the first time you make it, you will not know what it is supposed to taste like. 

The Famous Palmer House Fudge Brownie

A Modern Photograph of how the brownies look by following this ORIGINAL Palmer House Brownie recipe.

YIELD: About 24 brownies

ACTIVE TIME: 20 minutes

Brownie Ingredients

1 lb. plus 2 oz. OR (4 x 3.5-ounce bars) high-quality semi-sweet chocolate

1 lb. butter (1lb  = 2 cups OR 4 sticks)

12 oz. granulated sugar

8 oz. cake flour [1]

1 Tbsp baking powder

4 large whole eggs

1 lb crushed, toasted walnuts

Apricot Glaze Ingredients

1 cup of water

1 cup apricot preserves

1 envelope of unflavored gelatin powder (made from scratch in the Palmer kitchen)

NOTE:

If this is the first time baking this recipe, DO NOT CHANGE A THING or deviate from the recipe. If you make a change, you'll never know how it is meant to taste.

INSTRUCTIONS
MAKE BROWNIES: 

Melt chocolate with butter in a double boiler or heat-proof bowl suspended over very hot water. Mix dry ingredients in a mixing bowl (except walnuts.) Mix melted chocolate/butter mixture with dry ingredients. Whisk in eggs, one at a time, taking about 5 minutes of continuous whisking from the first egg to the last. Butter and flour a 9 x 12 baking dish. Preheat oven to 350°.F. Toast walnuts for about 15 minutes until fragrant. Lower oven temperature to 300° F. Chop walnuts and set them aside. Spread brownie batter into the prepared pan. It will be very liquid. Sprinkle the surface with the chopped walnuts, pressing down so that they are partly submerged. Bake in a 300° F oven for 45 to 50 minutes until the brownies have crisped on the edge of the pan–about 2 inches around the entire edge of the pan. The brownies in the center of the pan will remain slightly jiggly.

NOTE: 

When properly baked, these brownies will test "gooey" in the center with a toothpick test due to the richness of the batter. Remove brownies from the oven and cool on a rack for 30 minutes.

The brownies were served near frozen at the Fair, and Sitdown restaurants and cafes sold Mrs. Palmer's Brownies the same way ... ice cold.

Chef Stephen Henry says for the cleanest slices, freeze the brownies for three hours after glazing. Then cut, and serve while very firm and cold.

THE GLAZE: 

Mix water, preserves, and unflavored gelatin in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk until boiling; heat at boiling for two minutes. While the glaze is still hot, spread a thick layer over the still-warm brownies. Cool completely. 

Place in the freezer for 3 to 4 hours. Slice and serve while very cold and firm.

INDEX TO MY ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO FOOD & RESTAURANT ARTICLES.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

---

[1] What is the difference between "all-purpose flour" and "cake flour?"
Cake flour is a finely milled, delicate flour with a low protein content; it's usually bleached. When used in cakes, it results in a super-tender texture with a fine crumb and a good rise. Chiffon and angel food cake are two great examples of where cake flour really shines. The primary difference between cake flour and all-purpose (AP) flour is the protein content (which becomes gluten). The protein content of cake flour is about 8%, while the protein content of AP flour is slightly higher.

White City I, (1912-1918); Woodland Park, (1918-1921); White City II, (1921-1938), aka Dreamland Park, Springfield.

There were two amusement parks at 23rd Street and Capitol Avenue, in Springfield, Illinois, before the three Dreamland Parks. The first one was "White City" and then the short-lived "Woodland Park." The original White City was founded in 1912. It had a dance pavilion, baseball fields and other facilities but folded sometime before 1918. 

The second White City Park was located at 2425 East Cornell Avenue and opened in 1921. It was founded by Amos Duncan (1887-1945), a Black entrepreneur. The park had a roller coaster, a merry-go-round, a dance pavilion, and other kiddie attractions. It was popular with Negro residents of Springfield. 

The park was a major attraction for the black community during a time of segregation, as people came from as far as St. Louis and East St. Louis, arriving by rail, which ran directly into the park. The park catered to black organizations for picnics and festivals. Many activities took place on a regular basis, such as dances, live music, baseball games, rodeos, and picnics.

It's unsure exactly when the park's name was changed to Dreamland Park, which closed in the late 1930s during the Great Depression. 

Negro League baseball teams such as the Cincinnati Clowns and the Pittsburgh Steelers and the likes of Steel Arm Taylor and hall of fame pitcher Satchel Paige made several trips to play in Dreamland Park. 

The park became a major attraction, and large celebrations, lasting several days, were held on holidays such as the Fourth of July and Lincoln’s Birthday. By the mid-1930s, Dreamland Park started to decline as Amos Duncan ran into financial difficulties. 

Duncan sold the property to Ed White in 1938, but White was unable to successfully sustain the park.

The current Dreamland Park is located at 2300 Taylor Avenue and commemorates Duncan’s enterprise. It was added to the Springfield Park system in 1996. Land that was formerly Dreamland Park was dedicated by the Southeast High School to its new school grounds.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Andreas Von Zirngibl Gravesite is Chicago’s Smallest Cemetery.

The smallest cemetery in the City of Chicago measures little more than 100 square feet and is located in the middle of the scrapyard for Sims Metal Management Recycling Center at 9331 S. Ewing Avenue in Chicago, Illinois.

Von Zirngibl was born in Bavaria on March 30, 1797. At 18, he went to war with the Prussian forces of Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, a fearsome and much-respected field marshal who earned the nickname Marschall Vorwärts (Marshal Forward) due to his aggressive style of warfare.

Under Von Blücher, Von Zirngibl fought in the Battle of Waterloo, Belgium. During the famous defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, which the victorious Duke of Wellington called “the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life,” the young Andreas lost the limb.

He returned to Bavaria, where he made a living as a fisherman on the Danube River. He married and he and his wife had five children. With a large family to care for and in search of new opportunities, Von Zirngibl moved to America. He and his family arrived in Chicago in 1854, which back then was a town of some 50,000 inhabitants. According to his descendants, he purchased 44 acres of land near the mouth of the Calumet River, at a total cost of $160 in gold.

Von Zirngibl built a shack on his marshy land and continued his trade as a fisherman, catching sturgeon, herring, perch, and pike in Lake Michigan. It could have been the start of an idyllic new life for Andreas and his family, but he caught a fever and died on August 21, 1855, just a year after his arrival in America.

In accordance with his final requests, Von Zirngibl was buried on his land. His widow and children placed a wooden marker on his grave and surrounded it with a white picket fence. His family moved to Chicago’s North Side but continued to tend to the site for many years. Then, in 1895, a land dispute threw everything into doubt.

Most of this story is told through the claims made by Von Zirngibl's descendants — 40 years after his death — in the case of Zirngibl vs. Calumet and Chicago Canal and Dock Co. In this 1895 Illinois Supreme Court case, the Zirngibls, who had apparently dropped the "Von," argued that the company had usurped their land and their ancestor's gravesite. The family said its deed for the property had been destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

A story of big business cheating an immigrant family out of its land teemed with populist appeal, and the late Mike Royko even included the story in a 1967 column about industrialization in the Chicago Daily News. The problem is that parts of the tale — and no one can tell which parts — may be fabricated, according to Rod Sellers, a Washington High School social studies teacher and South Side history buff.

Von Zirngibl's gravesite in the middle os a scrapyard.

"It may have been a scam," he says. "My reading of it is that he [Von Zirngibl] was probably a squatter."

Justice David J. Baker, who wrote the court's opinion, cast a jaundiced eye at the Zirngibls' claims. For instance, he accused George Zirngibl, a son of Andreas Von Zirngibl, of lying on the stand. "We fear that his cupidity has unduly jogged his memory," he wrote. The judge also noted the tardiness of the Zirngibls' claim.

"It is remarkable," Baker wrote, "that during the years that they saw the forty acres change from an almost valueless swamp to a tract of land worth a million dollars, they made no attempt to profit from it."

Perhaps most damaging to the Zirngibls' claim of ownership was evidence that scores of other bodies were buried on the land. One witness, albeit 40 years after the fact, testified that Von Zirngibl had actually died in Whiting, Indiana and that his sons took him to the mouth of the Calumet to be buried.

Nonetheless, Baker did recognize the Zirngibls' dedication to the one-armed soldier's gravesite. In the end, the court ruled that the land belonged to Calumet and Chicago Canal and Dock, but awarded "to the widow and heirs the grave and the ground within the fence that encloses it, with the right of access to and egress from it."

The ruling ensured that any future owner of the land would have a property that included a cemetery on the land.

Andreas von Zirngibl’s gravesite and headstone.

Scrap Processing, owned by Cozzi Iron & Metal Inc., is only the latest in a long line of industrial operations that have owned the site. For most of this century, concrete mixers, dump trucks, and all sorts of industrial machinery have rumbled past Von Zirngibl's grave.

Andreas von Zirngibl's gravesite.

In 1987 the Southeast Historical Society, with the help of Henry Zirngibl, a descendant of Andreas Von Zirngibl, raised money to repair the rundown grave. The group placed a large concrete slab over the site and added a new granite headstone with an inscription that read, in part, "A Veteran of 1816 Battle of Waterloo," even though the battle took place on Sunday, 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in Belgium, part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands at the time. Around the gravesite, the Southeast Historical Society placed four massive concrete blocks to protect and mark the gravesite.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.