The History of the Tinker Family and the Tinker Swiss Cottage Museum and Gardens in Rockford, Illinois.

The Tinker Swiss Cottage is an historic house museum and gardens in Rockford, Illinois.

The Tinker Swiss Cottage in 1915. Note the sundial on the side of the driveway.

This house was built by Robert Hall Tinker between 1865-1870. The Tinker house was the first in Rockford to have electricity before the turn of the 20th century.

Most striking is the interior for its dimensions including the high ceilings, angled roof, and unique designs in many of the first floor rooms. Many elements of the house were created or inspired by the ideas of Tinker, including the walnut spiral staircase made by Robert out of a single piece of wood and the rooms with rounded corners. The museum contains all the original objects from the family from furniture, and artwork, to clothing and diaries.

The Victorian Living Room of Tinker Swiss Cottage. In 1855, Abraham Lincoln sat in the rocking chair during a visit to the nearby South Main Street mansion of Rockford industrialist John H. Manny.

   

The museum house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on December 27, 1972.

Robert Hall Tinker (1836-1924) was born to the Rev. Reuben and Mary Throop Wood Tinker on December 31, 1836 in the Sandwich Islands (modern day Hawaii). The family settled in Westfield, New York, when Robert was 13. At the age of 15, Robert left school and began working as a bank clerk. In 1856, William Knowlton was visiting his brother in Westfield, New York, met Robert Tinker, and was impressed with him. Arriving back in Rockford, Knowlton decided to write Robert and offer him a position as clerk in the Manny Reaper Co., where he was business manager for the wealthy widow, Mrs. John H. Manny. Robert accepted the offer and arrived in Rockford on August 12th, 1856.

Knowlton and Mrs. Manny were out of the city when he arrived, so he was given a room on the second story of a small dwelling standing opposite the St. Paul freight house. When Knowlton returned he gave Robert a position as a clerk, which he held before going to work as a bookkeeper for the Emerson-Talcott Company. Later, the eastern young man, who even then was familiarly known as Bob Tinker, returned to his first employer. Knowlton and Tinker formed a partnership to sell Manny Reapers. Tinker was later placed n charge of the Manny factory.

In 1862, Robert spent 9 months traveling extensively throughout Europe. As soon as his trip was over, he began to purchase land near Mrs. Manny’s mansion and started building his cottage. On April 24, 1870, Robert Tinker and Mary Manny married and began living in his cottage in the winter and in her mansion on the north side of Kent Creek in the summer.

When he was 39 years old he served as Mayor of Rockford in 1875. Robert was instrumental in helping Rockford to acquire a Public Library and an Opera House and was prominently identified with Rockford’s business and industrial growth for 68 years.

He became President of the Rockford Oatmeal Co., Rockford Steel and Bolt Co., and of C&R and Northern R.R. until it was absorbed by the C.B.&Q line. He was head of the Water Power for many years until he resigned in 1915. Robert also served on the Rockford Park Board until he retired on February 16th, 1924.

In 1901, Mary, Robert’s wife of 31 years, passed away. He then married her niece, Jessie Dorr Hurd, in 1904. It is thought of as a marriage of convenience. In 1908, Robert became a father, at the age of 71, when Jessie adopted a son, Theodore Tinker. Robert died in the Cottage on December 31, 1924, his eighty-eighth birthday. Upon Robert Tinker's death in 1924, Jessie created a partnership with the Rockford Park District, allowing her to remain in the house until her death. After her death in 1942 the Rockford Park District acquired the property and opened the house as a museum in 1943.

Mary Dorr Manny Tinker (1829-1901) was born August 29, 1829 in Hoosick Falls, New York, the youngest of three. She was reared in her grandparents’ stately mansion and received her education at the Academy in her native city. She became interested in the manufacturing of farm implements, and it was this lively interest in and attention to her family’s occupations, public and private, that attracted her future husband’s regard to her.  She maintained this interest in business through her life, and the great force of her character was intensified highly by just the culture and training she received in her early youth.

In 1852, she was married in her grandparents’ mansion to the young Reaper inventor, John H. Manny. They came to Rockford in 1853 and made their home in a small, white frame house on South Main Street. In January of 1856, John H. Manny died of tuberculosis and left Mary a widow at the age of 28. Mary was a businesswoman, staying involved with the Manny Reaper Company after John Manny’s death. She owned several parcels of land in Rockford, including the Holland House located on the north side of the creek. By 1857, Robert Tinker became her personal secretary, and on April 24, 1870 they were wed. Mary died September 4, 1901 at the age of 72.

Mary was a member of the Second Congregational Church and Women’s Missionary Society, Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Rockford’s Seminary Visiting Committee, and was a founding member of the Ladies Union Aid Society that has evolved into today’s Family Counseling Services of Northern Illinois.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Why Chicago Street Signs were changed from Black on Yellow to White on Green.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's "Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices" (MUTCD) is a constantly evolving guidebook showing cities the standard in street signage since 1935.

In the 1970s, the MUTCD began a national effort to help foreign visitors navigate the United States by adopting a color-coded sign system similar to Europe's. Chicago adopted the white-on-green street signs as part of that effort in 1975.

Many Chicagoans remember the yellow street signs that Chicago used.

The MUTCD's revised guidelines restricted yellow in signage to warning signs. It also mandated white backgrounds with black and red lettering or symbols for use as regulatory signs (for instance, "No U-Turn" signs were replaced with a black U with a red slash on a white background).

The guidelines recommended phasing out words on signs where possible and relying instead on universally understood symbols, like a red circle broken by a white line to indicate "Do Not Enter." Under that scheme, the color symbols for guidance were green and white – so "reflectorized" white-on-green street name signs became the new standard.

No official system was in place during the city's early years, making wayfinding pretty tough in our fast-growing city. A public call for street identification signs began around the turn of the 20th century when street names were often simply painted onto poles at neighborhood corners (if they were indicated at all).

Later, black-and-white or brown-and-white signs appeared
around the city, particularly downtown.

Finally, in 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt approved a grant for Chicago to hang 64,000 black-on-yellow steel street signs as a Public Works Administration project – but those signs didn't stick around very long. Most were removed for metal drives during World War II.

Not long after the war ended, the city began to examine new sign designs, testing out various lettering styles in the Loop. Once a style was settled, Chicago ordered new porcelain-coated steel street signs, again in the black-on-yellow color scheme, beginning in 1950. The signs were installed over the next few years, starting at the city's edges and working their way into the Loop. This time, rather than attaching the signs to the poles with straps that would rust and break, the signs were secured with bolts going into the poles.

When Chicago moved to the white-on-green signs in 1975, the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) again gradually installed thousands of signs throughout the city's more than 800 streets. But this time, the city had the brilliant idea of selling the beloved yellow signs to residents, so occasionally, you'll see a yellow sign decorating a home or business.

In my personal collection, West Arthur Avenue is the street I grew up on.

In 2009, the Federal Highway Administration announced in its MUTCD that all cities should use the upper and lowercase format for their street signs because upper/lowercase words are easier to read than all uppercase. 

According to research performed by the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, people read all-uppercase words one letter at a time but recognize upper/lowercase formatted words as a whole, making reading "MICHIGAN AVENUE" slower and more complex than reading "Michigan Avenue" while driving past. The upper/lower format also leaves more space around each letter, making the letters easier to distinguish for aging eyes.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

"The Spirit of the Fighting Yank," WWII Memorial on Devon Avenue in Chicago, Illinois.

"The Spirit of the Fighting Yank" by E.M. Viquesney is a life-sized figure cast in bronze-plated zinc, on a high pedestal protected by an iron picket fence. It is located at 2720 West Devon at the corner of Fairfield Avenue in Chicago's West Ridge community in West Rogers Park neighborhood.

I lived two blocks away from "The Spirit of the Fighting Yank" monument for thirty-plus years. I walked past it, peddled my Schwinn Orange Krate Stingray bicycle by it, and watched it pass by from the window on the CTA 155 bus a million times. The statue captures movement, frozen in bronzed zinc.

It is outside of the Republic Bank, originally named Cook County Federal Savings and Loan, then the First Cook Community Bank, which is in a brick colonial-style building inspired by Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the original home of the Liberty Bell.

The statue was modeled by E.M. Viquesney (1876-1946). An early version of the "Fighting Yank" was carved in limestone and dedicated in 1944 at the Monroe County Courthouse in Bloomington, Indiana.

After Viquesney's death, Ralph Gropp reproduced the statue in bronze-plated zinc at his Chicago Studio in 1951.

The statue has been recoated and refurbished, including
repairs to the Tommy-gun, by Jane Foley.

The figure, a fully geared army soldier, is striding forward, about to lob a live grenade with his taut right arm, staring out intently at his target.

The plaque on the black granite base reads "Lest We Forget They Died...That We Can Live in Independence. Independence Hall, Dedicated May 30, 1958. Presented and Created By Harry A. Cooper.

The dedication date of May 30, 1958, is the same date that unidentified veterans from WWII and the Korean War were interred at the 'Tomb of the Unknowns' in Arlington National Cemetery.

Unlike most other memorials to war veterans, this figure is frozen in a perpetual pose of impending defense, suggests that even in death, soldiers endeavor to protect the democratic way of life.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Eliza Emily Chappell, the First Chicago Teacher Paid by Public Funds in 1833.

Eliza Emily Chappell (1807-1888), an American educator, was the first Chicago teacher, at Fort Dearborn, paid by public funds in 1833.

The Eliza Chappell School was roughly at Lake and Clark Streets are today.

Chappell was born November 5, 1807, in Geneseo, New York. She was only sixteen when she began her teaching career and over the course of her life helped establish schools in almost every region of the United States. 

She opened a school for small children in Rochester, New York in 1828. In 1831, she traveled to Michigan and began tutoring at a frontier settlement on Mackinac Island. After a few months, she opened a school for mixed-raced Indian children.

Eliza Emily Chappell

Chappell arrived in Chicago in June 1833 with the prospects of opening a school by September. The school was established in a small log house formerly used as a store. There were 25 students; they furnished their own chairs, "but those who were unable to do so had primitive seats supplied them." There were no desks. Some students paddled their canoes across the Chicago River to and from the school. The only teaching tools Chappell had were "maps, a globe, scriptural texts and hymn books, and illustrations of geometry and astronomy."

In 1834, the school was moved into the First Presbyterian Church in Fort Dearborn, on the southwest corner of Lake and Clark Streets. The school was rented from the church for nine dollars a month.

That year, Chappell established a normal school for future teachers, located on the future site of LaSalle Street, for 12 girls who lived on the prairie.

Chappell married Rev. Jeremiah Porter, the youngest child of Dr. William Porter and Charlotte Porter, on June 15, 1835. Porter and Jeremiah first met on Mackinac Island during discussions about establishing a school.

After the Porters were married, they left Chicago for Farmington, Illinois. They moved to Peoria, Illinois, before settling in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on January 4, 1851; they remained there until 1858. The Porters returned to Chicago when Jeremiah became pastor of Edwards Congregational Church.

The Porters were living in Chicago at the outbreak of the American Civil War; they promptly entered the service. As early as the summer of 1861, Chappell-Porter visited Cairo, Illinois, organizing hospitals, distributing supplies, escorting volunteers, and seeing to the sick or wounded. In October 1861, Eliza became the office manager of the Chicago (later Northwestern) U.S. Sanitary Commission, which solicited food, medical dressings, and other supplies for use in frontline military hospitals.

After the Battle of Shiloh in early April 1862, Chappell-Porter recognized that she would be more useful in the field. In July 1863, she returned to Chicago to act as associate director of the Chicago branch of the Northwest Sanitary Commission with fellow humanitarian Dorothea Dix. Most of 1862 were spent in field hospitals at Ft. Pickering where Jeremiah was stationed. Following the Battle of Vicksburg, Porter traveled to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she worked side by side with Mary Ann Bickerdyke. Chappell-Porter and Bickerdyke directed all manner of volunteer field-hospital work, such as cooking, laundering, distributing relief supplies, and—in emergencies—nursing the wounded.

Chappell-Porter followed the U.S. Army to the Battle of Atlanta. Jeremiah served as Chaplain in Battery A of the First Illinois Light Artillery at Ft. Pickering. Porter secured nurses from Chicago, and on orders from medical director Dr. Charles McDougal, escorted the nurses to Savannah. The Porters followed the Union Army through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia.

Chappell-Porter worked closely with Bickerdyke distributing supplies and caring for the sick. Eliza helped treat the wounded in Memphis from the Battle of Vicksburg. After the battle, Porter went through Louisville to Nashville, then on to Alabama, where she assisted Lincoln Clark's wife at Huntsville Prison. She continued her relief work up until Sherman’s Campaign.

Both Eliza and Jeremiah were active reformers. Jeremiah met abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois, for an anti-slavery convention, and Chappell-Porter educated children and veteran freedmen during and after the Civil War. She established a school in Memphis for African-American children. She participated in founding a school at Shiloh, Tennessee, for former slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.

In Austin, Texas, Chappell-Porter established a Sunday school for freed slave children. "Eliza would have a multitude of little black children packed close as their little wriggling bodies would permit. I seem to see her standing before them in that rude room upon that rough floor her beautiful eyes beaming, her whole face illuminated with love while every eye was fastened upon her face as she taught them of God and His laws, of Jesus and His love." She went on to establish a kindergarten for African-American children in a missionary settlement in East Austin, Texas.

Eliza and Jeremiah were active in the Underground Railroad. During their stay in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the Porter home was the last stop before slaves crossed into the safety of Canada. She regarded it as a "secret service before the Lord". When a fugitive slave and his three small children arrived at the Porters' doorstep in Green Bay in the middle of the night, Eliza suggested housing the family in the church. For four days, the belfry served as a refuge until a sailboat could be procured to carry the passengers to a steamboat bound for Canada.

In addition to her medical assistance, Eliza made appeals to many politicians about obtaining speedier recovery of convalescent soldiers—especially sending those soldiers home to northern hospitals. Chappell-Porter even appealed to Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C. in 1863:

But it is not for the dead I plead, but for those who still live, and are suffering home and heart sickness in Southern hospitals. We ask that as you are giving furloughs to all veterans who are able and willing to re-enlist from the ranks, you will not forget the sick and wounded veterans, but extend furloughs to them also. 

President Lincoln, do you know that the holding of our sick in government hospitals, is doing more in some sections of our country to prevent re-enlistment, and weaken confidence in our government than all other causes combined?

After her service in the Civil War ended in October 1865, the Porters went to the "Mexican frontier" in Texas to distribute supplies to U.S. soldiers on behalf of the Sanitary and Christians Commissions. Chappell-Porter also opened a Protestant school. She taught in the school herself until the autumn of 1866, when Jeremiah became the pastor of the Congregational church in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. By this time it had been five years since the Porters has settled into a home of their own. In 1868, the Porters returned to schoolwork in Brownsville, Texas, when Jeremiah became pastor of the Presbyterian Church there. In Brownsville, Eliza reopened the coeducational Rio Grande Seminary. After about a year in Brownsville, they returned to Chicago.

Jeremiah was appointed Post Chaplain by the U.S. Senate in 1870 and sent to work at Fort Brown, Texas, on the north side of the Rio Grande. In January 1874, the Porters went to Fort Sill in the Oklahoma Territory, among the Comanche and Kiowa tribes, because Jeremiah was the chaplain for Ulysses S. Grant's command. Chappell-Porter "taught the children of the garrison in a day school [Rio Grande Female Institute], gathered the laundresses for instruction and made herself the special friend of everyone in need."

Jeremiah was transferred to Ft. Russell, Wyoming, in 1875. By this time, Porter's health started to deteriorate. After a bout with malaria[1] and pneumonia, her lungs were never the same, making frontier living intolerable. She spent much time away from her husband because she couldn't venture out in the cold. Chappell-Porter was torn between wanting to be near her sons in Chicago, and avoiding the harsh winters; she found any permanent resting place impractical. She spent summers in Wisconsin or Michigan, and winters in Florida, Texas, or California. Even though her health failed her, she kept busy with correspondence and "read with keen interest."

Eliza caught a chill at Christmas in 1887 that developed into pneumonia. She died at the age of 80 on January 1, 1888, in Santa Barbara, California. Memorial services were held in Chicago on January 17. People from all walks of life shared recollections of Chappell-Porter.

Mary Livermore—a fellow member of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, journalist, and women's-rights advocate—remarked of the "uniform gentleness and untiring diligence that characterized her," noting "What a power she was in the hospitals" and "It seems to me that her biography, like that of our Lord, maybe condensed into one phrase, 'she went about doing good.'

Jeremiah remained active, giving lectures to large crowds up until just before his own passing in 1893.

Eliza Chappell-Porter is buried at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.

The Eliza Chappell Elementary School, located at 2135 West Foster Avenue in Chicago, was built in 1937 and is named in honor of Chappell-Porter. The school, formerly known as the Foster and Leavitt site, was named on October 20, 1937, with Elvira Fox as the elected principal. A plaque was placed in Chappell-Porter's honor at the southwest corner of State and Wacker Streets, acknowledging the first public school in Chicago in 1833.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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[1] Malaria was a common disease in Chicagoland and southern Illinois in pioneer days, wherever swamps, ponds, and wet bottomlands allowed mosquitoes to thrive; the illness was called ague, or bilious fever when liver function became impaired; medical historians believe that the disease came from Europe with early explorers around 1500; early travel accounts and letters from the Midwest reports of the ague (a fever or shivering fit), such as those of Jerry Church and Roland Tinkham, the details of which are extracted from their writings:

From the Journal of Jerry Church, when he had "A Touch of the Ague" in 1830: ...and the next place we came to of any importance, was the River Raisin, in the state of Michigan. There we met with a number of gentlemen from different parts of the world, speculators in land and town lots and cities, all made out on paper, and prices set at one and two hundred dollars per lot, right in the woods, and musquitoes and gallinippers thick enough to darken the sun. I recollect the first time I slept at the hotel, I told the landlord the next morning I could not stay in that room again unless he could furnish a boy to fight the flies, for I was tired out myself; and not only that, but I had lost at least half a pint of blood. The landlord said that he would remove the musquitoes the next night with smoke. He did so, and after that, I was not troubled so much with them. We stayed there a few days, but they held the property so high that we did not purchase any. The River Raisin is a small stream of water, something similar to what the Yankees would call a brook. I was very much disappointed in the appearance of the country when I arrived there, for I anticipated finding something great, and did not know but that I might on the River Raisin find the article growing on trees! But it was all a mistake, for it was rather a poor section of the country. ...We then passed on to Chicago, and there I left my fair lady-traveler and her brother, and steered my course for Ottawa, in the county of Lasalle, Illinois. Arrived there, I put up at the widow Pembrook`s, near the town, and intended to make her house my home for some time. I kept trading round in the neighborhood for some time, and at last, was taken with a violent chill and fever, and had to take my bed at the widow`s, send for a doctor, and commence taking medicine; but it all did not do me much good. I kept getting weaker every day, and after I had eaten up all the doctor-stuff the old doctor had, pretty much, he told me that it was a very stubborn case, and he did not know as he could remove it, and thought it best to have counsel. So I sent for another doctor, and they both attended to me for some time. I still kept getting worse and became so delirious as not to know anything for fifteen hours. I, at last, came to and felt relieved. After that, I began to feel better and concluded that I would not take any more medicine of any kind, and I told my landlady what I had resolved. She said that I would surely die if I did not follow the directions of the doctor. I told her that I could not help it; that all they would have to do was to bury me, for my mind was made up. In a few days, I began to gain strength, and in a short time, I got so that I could walkabout. I then concluded that the quicker I could get out of those "Diggins" the better it would be for me. So I told my landlady that my intention was to take my horse and wagon and try to get to St. Louis; for I did not think that I could live long in that country, and concluded I must go further south. I accordingly had my trunk re-packed and made a move. I did not travel far in a day, but at last arrived at St. Louis, very feeble and weak, and did not care much how the world went at that time. However, I thought I had better try and live as long as there was any chance. 

From a letter by Roland Tinkham, a relative of Gurdon. S. Hubbard, describing his observations of malaria during a trip to Chicago in the summer of 1831: ...the fact cannot be controverted that on the streams and wet places the water and air are unwholesome, and the people are sickly. In the villages and thickly settled places, it is not so bad, but it is a fact that in the country which we traveled the last 200 miles, more than one-half the people are sick; this I know for I have seen it. We called at almost every house, as they are not very near together, but still, there is no doubt that this is an uncommonly sickly season. The sickness is not often fatal; ague and fever, chill and fever, as they term it, and in some cases bilious fever are the prevailing diseases. 

Digging into Jean-Gabriel Cerré's success in the French and British régimes and George Rogers Clark's Command of the Illinois Country during the revolutionary war.

George Rogers Clark

When historical accounts provide simple narratives, it usually indicates digging deeper.

The exploits of George Rogers Clark in what would become the Illinois Country during the Revolutionary War are just such a narrative. We'll take a closer look at the facts.

The story usually goes something like this: Clark appears, the French inhabitants of the American Bottom rejoice. They rejoice because they are throwing off the yoke of Great Britain and then they become American citizens.

Not everyone in Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and Prairie du Pont, saw it that way.

Jean-Gabriel Cerré

Take the example of Jean-Gabriel Cerré (1734-1805). By the mid 1750s Cerré was, in what would become Illinois, a merchant. He established himself at Kaskaskia but apparently retained close personal and commercial ties with his birthplace. His eldest daughter married Montreal notary Pierre-Louis Panet, and Cerré made periodic visits to the city throughout his career. He shipped goods from there to Illinois in 1767, 1775, and 1777 and, since the regions had close economic links, probably in other years as well. He dealt in the usual trade goods, including guns and ammunition, cloth, tobacco, and metal objects. It would appear that he was not just a storeman; he spent the winter of 1776–77, for instance, among the Mascoutens and Kickapoos.

Cerré became a leading merchant and member of the Illinois community in a turbulent era of its history. His behaviour during the many régimes through which he lived suggests that he believed strongly in the importance of obeying established authority. In the years from 1764 to 1778, when the British ruled the area, he seems to have conducted himself correctly.

Kaskaskia in 1765, as Cerré would have known the settlement.

Even in 1777 and 1778, when British control was being undermined by American agents, he upheld the authority of the administrator, Philippe-François Rastel de Rocheblave. It has been suggested that Cerré's loyalty was encouraged by the threat posed to his business by American competitors who were invading the Illinois country.

Whatever the case, after George Rogers Clark seized the region for Virginia in the summer of 1778, Cerré grudgingly accepted the new order, hoping that the establishment of courts would bring order to the area. Virginia (before ceding land to the Illinois country) established civil government for the conquered territory in 1778, and the following May Cerré allowed himself to be elected justice of the peace for Kaskaskia and district. By the terms of their commission he and the other justices of the peace could also sit as judges of a county court with jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases. The law which they were to interpret was basically French with some modifications from Virginia practice. Cerré was not a legal expert; concerning his later description to Congress of the judicial system under the French and British régimes, historian Clarence Walworth Alvord has stated that he showed "a surprising ignorance" of the subject. He appears, however, to have been an honest man whose opinions were respected in the community.

The French inhabitants of Illinois had hoped that the establishment of courts would protect them from the free-for-all that was developing under the occupation by American frontiersmen. As soon as justices of the peace were commissioned they submitted a petition complaining of depredations by the troops, land grabbing by speculators, and the unrestricted sale of liquor to Indians and black slaves. The government was unable to impose order, however, and the inhabitants grew less willing to make sacrifices for its support. By the autumn of 1779 the Americans were employing coercion to get supplies. The result was an emigration, particularly by the more prosperous residents, across the Mississippi River to Spanish territory. Cerré had accumulated considerable property on the west bank around St Louis and Ste Geneviève by the 1770s, and in late 1779 or early 1780 he moved to St Louis.

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The word "Mississippi" comes from the Ojibwe Indian Tribe (Algonquian language family) word "Messipi" or "misi-ziibi," which means "Great River" or "Gathering of Waters." French explorers, hearing the Ojibwe word for the river, recorded it in their own language with a similar pronunciation. The Potawatomi (Algonquian language family) pronounced "Mississippi" as the French said it, "Sinnissippi," which was given the meaning "Rocky Waters."

Under Spain's rule, his business flourished, and he was soon the wealthiest man in the area. His daughter Marie-Thérèse married Auguste Chouteau in 1786, a union that brought together the community's two leading merchant families. His son Paschal was later employed by the Americans as a secretary and interpreter to Indian treaty commissions. Cerré received several land grants from the Spanish authorities. He had a house in town, a country property, and a stock farm; in 1791 he owned 43 slaves – far more than anyone else in St Louis. A grant in 1800 referred to him as "one of the most ancient inhabitants of this country, whose known conduct and personal merit are recommendable." His acquaintance with change had not ended, however. During the next few years Spanish Louisiana was ceded to France and then purchased by the United States. Thus by the time of his death in 1805 Jean-Gabriel Cerré had experienced no fewer than six régimes, without moving more than fifty miles, despite these upheavals he had managed to become one of the most prosperous merchants in the Mississippi valley.

For some, the coming of the American government was a positive development. For others, the complexities of life on the frontier presented problems. History is messy and is not kind to seemingly simple narratives. Therein lies its true importance.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.