Lost Towns of Illinois - Grayland, Illinois

Grayland, a suburb of Chicago (annexed in 1889) was created by subdividing John Gray's farm. Gray deeded the land that he had already built a depot on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad line. In return for the property, the R.R. promised to maintain and service the depot, thus ensuring that the inhabitants of Gray's subdivision would have easy transport to Chicago and back. The station was opened in 1873 to service Grayland.

John Gray, of Grayland, Illinois, a beautiful Chicago suburb, was at one time the jolly landlord at the Green Tree Tavern from 1838 to 1841 when it was called the Chicago Hotel.

When not kept busy with his guests sat in the door and shot wolves that came to carry away his young pigs at the barn across the street.

November of 1840 may be dated the earliest fair footing of education in Chicago with the first schoolhouse. The Board of Education then consisted of John Gray, Wm, Jones, John Young Scammon, Isaac N. Arnold, Nathan H. Balles, J. H. Scott, and Hiram Hugunin. Teachers were paid $100 for a quarter, consisting of three months.

The first public school building worth mention was erected in 1843 and stood where The Inter Ocean office stood (on the northwest corner of Madison and Dearborn at 85 West Madison [under the old Chicago street numbering]). It was built at the urgent instance of Alderman Miltimore, and was for years known as "Miltimore's Folly," it is very generally assumed that there would never be enough children in Chicago to fill so large a building.

Today, the Grayland Station is a Metra commuter railroad station in the Old Irving Park neighborhood in Chicago along the Milwaukee District/North Line. It is located at 3729 North Kilbourn Street, which is 8.2 miles away from Union Station, the southern terminus of the line, and serves commuters between Union Station and Fox Lake, Illinois.

NOTE: Additional reading about John Gray; The Township of Jefferson, Illinois, Chapter VII, is in my Digital Research Library of Illinois History®

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Jean Baptiste La Lime was Chicago's first murder victim; killed by John Kinzie in 1812.

Chicago was not a city, but rather a frontier settlement occupied mostly by French-Canadian and American traders as well as soldiers and Indians. It was the home of Fort Dearborn, the site of the famous battle that would take place that same year.

But Fort Dearborn’s history was bloodied even before it became known for the battle that bears its name. Just two months earlier — on June 17 — it was the site of Chicago's first documented slaying — and some say its first murder. The suspect in the slaying was John Kinzie, who, in historical accounts, was sometimes referred to as "Chicago's first citizen." 

Haiti-born Jean Baptiste Pointe de Sable is widely considered to own the title of "Chicago's first non-native citizen" today.

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"Pointe" is the proper French spelling, but the final 'e' is almost always dropped in documents. The 'du' of Pointe du Sable is a misnomer (a wrong or inaccurate name or designation). It's an American corruption of 'de' as pronounced in French. "Du Sable" first appears long after his death in 1818. I use the correct spelling in this article.

The Kinzie Mansion. The House in the background is that of Antoine Ouilmette. Illustration from 1827.

Successive owners and occupants include:
Pointe de Sable: A fur trader and farmer, he moved from his 1784 farm on the Guarie (Gary) River [1] (north branch of the Chicago River at Wolf Point). He Departs Chicago in 1800.

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The Wayne County Register of Deeds in Detroit—Chicago was part of that county during Northwest Territory days—debunks many of the Kinzies’ claims. Their records show Jean Lalime, not Joseph Le Mai, bought De Sable’s trading post in 1800, bankrolled by Lalime and Kinzie’s mutual boss, fur trader William Burnett. There COULD NOT have been confusion because  Kinzie signed the deed as a witness.

Successive owners and occupants include: 

• Jean Lalime/William Burnett: 1800-1803, owner {{a careful reading of the Pointe de Sable-Lalime sales contract indicates that William Burnett was not just signing as a witness, but also financing the transaction, therefore controlling ownership}}
• John Kinzie's Family: 1804-1828 (except during 1812-1816).
• Widow Leigh & Mr. Des Pins: 1812-1816.
• John Kinzie's Family: 1817-1829.
• Anson Taylor: 1829-1831 (residence and store).
• Dr. E.D. Harmon: 1831 (resident & medical practice).
• Jonathan N. Bailey: 1831 (resident and post office).
• Mark Noble, Sr.: 1831-1832.
• Judge Richard Young: 1832 (circuit court).
• Unoccupied and decaying beginning in 1832.
• Nonexistent by 1835.

The deceased was Jean Baptiste La Lime, a French trader who also served as an interpreter among the settlement's inhabitants and the Indians. La Lime first purchased Pointe de Sable's cabin, later changing hands, then Kinzie buys the property in 1804. In 1812, Kinzie and La Lime were neighbors, but historical accounts do not portray their relationship as neighborly. There was "bad blood" between them, according to a Chicago Daily Tribune article from 1942.

"They had some long association with each other," Russell Lewis, chief historian at the Chicago History Museum, said. "It was a very small neighborhood… and people were competitive. John Kinzie was not known as a particularly generous or affable person."

While Kinzie's name triumphed over La Lime’s in Chicago lore, historical portraits of him aren't all flattering. A Chicago Tribune article from 1966 paints Kinzie as an "aggressive" trader who clashed with some American soldiers stationed at Fort Dearborn. Ann Durkin Keating, a history professor at North Central College in Naperville, describes Kinzie as a "volatile and violent character." Tensions between Kinzie and La Lime came to a head on June 17, 1812, when the two men met outside Fort Dearborn, La Lime armed with a pistol and Kinzie with a butcher’s knife. Keating describes the murder that ensued as "premeditated" in her book "Rising Up from Indian Country: The Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago."

A witness account of what followed appears in Keating's book: “We saw the men come out together; we heard the pistol go off and saw the smoke. Then they fell down together. La Lime didn't get up at all, I don't know, but Kinzie got home pretty quick. Blood was running from his shoulder where La Lime shot him.”

The reasons for the fatal dispute are unknown. Kinzie fled the area afterward and didn’t return until authorities ruled the slaying was in self-defense. Historians do not know whether Kinzie attacked La Lime first or if it were the other way around.

"The fact that Kinzie, of course, after La Lime was killed, ran away and became a fugitive, is open to many interpretations," Lewis said. "He was innocent if it was self-defense, so why did he run away?" Whether Kinzie did murder La Lime in self-defense — and it's suggested that his gunshot wound is evidence that he might have — another possible reason he fled is his loyalties. 

Chicago in 1812 was a frontier settlement with people from all over the world — France, Canada, Great Britain, and possibly Spain, to name a few — and the Indians who already lived there. Lewis said that Kinzie may have stood out in this melting pot for his pro-British and anti-American stance. This may have made him unpopular with some of the settlement’s inhabitants, possibly leading Kinzie to believe he wouldn't get a fair trial. After recovering from the gunshot wound from La Lime, Kinzie narrowly escaped death again at the Fort Dearborn Massacre, which occured in August of that year.

Billy Caldwell, whose history was mostly fabricated, arrived on the scene just after the Fort Dearborn battle and saved the lives of the John Kinzie family. That’s the traditional account of what had happened. It didn't happen.

Kinzie suffered a stroke on June 6, 1828, and died a few hours later. Originally buried at the Fort Dearborn Cemetery, Kinzie's remains were moved to City Cemetery in 1835. When the cemetery was closed due to concerns it could contaminate the city's water supply, Kinzie's remains were moved to Graceland Cemetery.in Chicago.

John Kinzie's grave is in Graceland Cemetery.

La Lime's body was rumored to be buried near Kinzie's cabin. In 1891, 79 years after the slaying, a partial skeleton thought to belong to La Lime was excavated at Illinois Street and Cass Street (now Wabash Avenue) and given to the Chicago Historical Society, which still possesses the preserved skeleton. The remains have never been confirmed to belong to La Lime, whose legacy remains nearly as anonymous as his skeleton.

The alleged skeleton of Jean La Lime at the Chicago Historical Museum.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The History of Ancient Lake Chicago and Today's Lake Michigan.

The city of Chicago lies in a broad plain that, hundreds of millions of years ago, was a great interior basin covered by warm, shallow seas. These seas covered portions of North America from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Evidence of these seas is found in the fossils of coral, such as those unearthed in Illinois quarries at Stony Island Avenue, Thornton and McCook Avenues, or at 18th Street and Damen Avenue, all in Chicago. Evidence may also be found in the fossils in the Niagara limestone bedrock found throughout the Chicago area and extending all the way to Niagara, New York. 

Much later, the polar ice cap crept four times down across the continent, covering the region with ice to a depth of a mile or more. As the climate changed, the ice melted, the last great ice flow, the Wisconsin Glacier of the Pleistocene period, which covered much of the northern half of North America, retreated, and an outlet for the melting water developed through the Sag River and the Des Plaines River Valley around Mt. Forest, in the area known as the Palos.

The Kankakee Torrent poured through those valleys, eventually leaving behind the prehistoric Lake Chicago or Glacial Lake Chicago, the term used by geologists for a lake that preceded Lake Michigan when the Wisconsin Glacier retreated from the Chicago area, beginning about 14,000 years ago.

Lake Chicago's level, at its highest, was almost 60 feet higher than the level of present Lake Michigan, and the lake completely covered the area now occupied by Chicago. Its northern outlet into the St. Lawrence River was still blocked by remnants of the glacier. It drained through the so-called Chicago outlet, a notch in the Valparaiso moraine[1], into the Mississippi system. Its western shores reached to where Oak Park and LaGrange now exist.

LAKE CHICAGO

As the glacier shrank in stages, the major three of which are often referred to as the Glenwood phase (50 feet above the level of Lake Michigan; circa 12,000 years ago), the Calumet phase (35 feet; circa 10,000 years ago), and the Tolleston phase (20 feet; less than 8,000 years ago). After each stage, the next barrier remained solid, stabilizing the lake and creating distinct sandy beaches. If the outlet was formed by a steady erosion of the barrier, it would have been less likely that the well-defined beaches would have been created.

This undated marker is located in the southern portion of Lincoln Park, on the footpath paralleling the east side of Stockton Drive. A second identical marker is located on the same ancient beach ridge 485 feet East-North-East from the first one.

The lake's southern shores were dammed by the hills of the Tinley-Valparaiso terminal moraine systems. As the glacier retreated farther and cleared the northern outlet, the lake level fell further, and Lake Chicago became Lake Michigan. Along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, the beaches of Lake Chicago were destroyed by erosion, except the highest beach. Much of this beach was also destroyed. The best remaining segments are along the southern tip of Lake Michigan, now known as the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

HOW LAKE MICHIGAN GOT ITS NAME
The first Europeans to see Lake Michigan were French traders and explorers in the 1600s. One of which, Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635), who mapped much of northeastern North America, called Lake Michigan the Grand Lac. It was later named "Lake of the Stinking Water" or "Lake of the Puants," after the people who occupied its shores.

In 1679, the lake became known as Lac des Illinois because it gave access to the country of the Indians, so named. Three years before, Claude-Jean Allouez (1622-1689), a French Jesuit missionary, called it Lac St. Joseph, by which name it was often designated by early writers while others called it Lac Dauphin.

Another story recounts that Jean Nicolet, the first European to set foot in Wisconsin in 1634, landed on the shores of Green Bay and was greeted by Winnebago Indians, whom the French called "Puans." Lake Michigan was labeled as "Lake of Puans" on an early and incomplete 1670 map of the region that showed only the lake's northern shores. However, only Green Bay is labeled as "Baye de Puans" (Bay of the Winnebago Indians) on maps from 1688 and 1708. On the 1688 map, Lake Michigan is called Lac des Illinois.

Jesuit map of Lake Superior (or Lac Tracy) and Lake Michigan (or Lac des Illinois). Map by anonymous cartographer, 1671.

An Indian name for Lake Michigan was "Michi gami" and through further interaction with the Indians, the "Lake of the Stinking Water" received its final name of Michigan, derived from the Ojibwa Indian word mishigami, meaning large lake.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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[1] Moraines are accumulations of dirt and rocks that have fallen onto the glacier surface or have been pushed along by the glacier as it moves.