Lost Towns of Illinois - Strasburg in La Salle County.

The Matthiessen and Hegeler Zinc Company (Frederick Matthiessen and Edward Hegeler aka M & H Zinc) site was located in LaSalle County, Illinois, with a portion of an off-site residential area called "Strasburg" in 1910, a suburb of the City of LaSalle (See hand-drawn map). Not the same town as Strasburg in Shelby County, Illinois. 

Strasburg, Illinois in 1910 - Click the map for a full-size view.

The M & H Zinc operated a zinc smelter on the industrial portion of the site from 1858 until 1961. The company added a rolling mill to its operations in 1866 to produce zinc sheets. The M & H Zinc declared bankruptcy in 1968, and only basic rolling mill operations took place from 1968 until 1978. The site also includes the Little Vermilion River and a 6-acre slag pile (identified as the M & H Dump on the map) located along the river containing metals such as cadmium, copper, chromium, lead, nickel and zinc.

Strasburg was home to about 10 different families. The homes that once stood in Strasburg were made of stone. All the houses sat below the hill and on "shelves" part way up the hill. Most families living in Strasberg were employed by M & H Zinc. Some explosives were stored under the bridge for easy access to blow up land in search of natural minerals.

This land was rented to the families of Strasberg by M & H Zinc for the rate of $1 a month for each individual lot to protect the company against the tenants claiming squatters' rights. No trace of those houses exists today.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 
Map tweaked by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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MAP AND LEGEND

By EMIL WYLEPSKI, who remembered the area from his childhood. 

1. Marchekowski family house and barn. The family owned the only horse in the valley and was able to cross Vermillion creek at a shallow point when the water was low.

2. This was a stone house of the Thomas Wylepski family. All the houses sat below the hill; some were on level "shelves" part way up the hill and cut into the bank.

3. The Vincent Plochocki family house.

4. The home of the Baron family.

5. Emil was unable to remember the family that lived there.

6. The Grubich family house. Because all of the houses were relatively low, they occasionally flooded as the spring runoff was too much for the tunnel beneath the bridge to handle. The Grubich house, being nearest to the bridge, was always the first to be flooded.

7. The M & H Zinc Company's pump house.

8. The Moskalewicz family house.

9. Emil was unable to remember the family that lived there.

10. Emil was unable to remember the family that lived there.

11. M & H Zinc Company dam. The dam broke on one 4th of July, flooding the whole works. A new dam was later built downstream.

12. A small plank footbridge anchored with cable and supported in the center with a sawhorse.

13, 14, 15. These three houses were already covered by the slag pile by the early 1900s.

16. The M & H powerhouse where explosives were stored. This sat above the hill.

17. Oakwood Cemetery.

18. Gardens on flatlands above the hill worked by the community's families.

19. Stone arch bridge on Fifth Street spanning the Little Vermillion River. 

A future look from 1908 of Chicago's State Street in 50 years.

A future look from 1908 of Chicago's State Street in 50 years.
A postcard of what they thought it would look like in 1958.

Western and Devon Avenues in the West Rogers Park Neighborhood of the West Ridge Community of Chicago. 1934

Looking north on Western Avenue from Devon Avenue in the West Rogers Park Neighborhood of the West Ridge Community of Chicago. 1934

The History of Chicagoan Mark Beaubien, the Hospitality Guru began in 1830.

Mark Beaubien (1800-1881) was born in Detroit, younger brother of Jean Baptiste; married Monique Nadeau (1800-1847), with whom he had 16 children, 14 of whom survived their mother; then married Elizabeth Mathieu, with whom he had seven children.

Mark Beaubien, builder
Of Chicago's First Hotel.

Mark came to Chicago in 1826 with Monique and their children and purchased a small log cabin on the south bank of the Chicago River near the Forks from James Kinzie. In 1829, he began to take in guests, calling his cabin the "Eagle Exchange Tavern." A fun-loving fiddle player, he loved to entertain his guests at night, tempting one to believe stories about his knack for boyish mischief. Mark was licensed to keep a tavern on June 9, 1830, and later voted on August 2. When the town plat was published that year, he found that his business was in the middle of a street and moved the structure to the southeast corner of Market Street (North Wacker Drive) and Lake Street.

He purchased from the government in 1830 lots 3 and 4 in block 31 on which his building stood, and the small block 30, later selling part of the land to Charles A. Ballard. He was listed on the Peoria County census of August 1830. 

Mark Beaubien built the Eagle Exchange Tavern (later the Sauganash Hotel) in 1829 on the future site of the first Wigwam building and is regarded as the first tavern, hotel, and restaurant in Chicago. It was located at Wolf Point, the intersection of the Chicago River's north, south, and main branches, at Lake and Market Streets (North Wacker Drive). The Sauganash Tavern was one of the few grocers with billiard tables. He named the hotel in honor of his friend Billy Caldwell, whose Indian name was Sauganash.

The Sauganash Hotel. The log cabin on the left was Chicago's first drugstore.

The Green Tree Tavern wasn't built until 1833.

On June 6, 1831, at the new county seat (Chicago), he was granted a license to sell goods in Cook County, and his cabin sold Indian goods (arts & crafts). In the late summer of 1832, he rented his original log cabin, adjacent to his "Sauganash Tavern[1]," to the newly arrived Philo Carpenter for use as - Chicago's 1st - drugstore. An ardent enemy of alcohol, Carpenter soon moved out. Mark next rented the space to John S. Wright, and in 1833, the cabin became a school under Eliza Chappel's direction.

Mark and Mark, Jr. were listed among "500 Chicagoans" on the census Commissioner Thomas J.V. Owen took before the incorporation of Chicago as a town in early August 1833. Mark was one of the "Qualified Electors" who voted to incorporate the Town and, on August 10, voted in the first town election.

He received $500 in payment for a claim at the Chicago Treaty in September 1833. Mark became the first licensed ferry owner, and in 1834, he built his second hotel, the "Exchange Coffee House," at the northwest corner of Lake and Wells Streets. He placed an ad in the December 21, 1835, issue of the Chicago Democrat that read: "I, Mark Beaubien, do agree to pay 25 bushels of Oats if any man will agree to pay me the same number of bushels if I win against any man's horse or mare in the Town of Chicago, against Maj. R.A. Forsyth's bay mare, now in Town."

Listed in the 1839 City Directory as hotel-keeper, Lake Street. In 1840, Mark moved to Lisle, Illinois, with his family, where he acquired farmland from William Sweet south of Sweet's Grove and also a cabin located immediately west of the Beaubien Cemetery (a small cemetery on land set aside by Mark Beaubien on Ogden Avenue in Lisle). The cabin soon became Beaubien Tavern while it was still home to the residing family.

The Beaubien Tavern, depicted by local painter Les Schrader, was the site of a toll station on the Southwest Plank Road that ran through Lisle to Chicago and later became Ogden Avenue.

Mark was also listed as a U.S. lighthouse keeper in the 1843 Chicago City Directory. From 1851 to 1857 he used the Beaubien Tavern building as a toll station for the Southwest Plank Road (running from Lisle to Chicago), with his son collecting the toll.

Later, between 1859 and 1860, he was again the lighthouse keeper in Chicago. His address in 1878 was in Newark in Kendall County. During the last 10 years of his life, he was troubled by failing memory, much to his chagrin, because he loved to tell stories of the past; he was happiest in the company of old friends. Mark died on April 11, 1881, in his daughter Mary and son-in-law, Georges Mathieu's house, in Kankakee and was buried with his second wife in St. Rose Cemetery, in the oldest portion of Mound Grove.

His fiddle is preserved at the Chicago History Museum.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] Sauganash Tavern: In the early days, while Mr. Beaubien kept a tavern, possibly the old Sauganash Tavern, when emigration from the east began to pour forth the stream which has not yet subsided, Mark's loft, capable of storing half a hundred men, for a night, if closely packed, was often filled to repletion. The furniture equipment, however, for a caravansary so well patronized, it is said, was exceedingly scant; that circumstance, however, only served to exhibit more clearly the eminent skill of the landlord. With the early shades of an autumn eve, the first men arriving were given a bed on the floor of the staging or loft, and, covering them with two blankets, Mark bade them a hearty goodnight. Fatigued with the day's travel, they would soon be sound asleep when two more would be placed by their side, and those "two blankets" would be drawn over these newcomers.

The first two were journeying too intently in the land of dreams to notice this sleight of hand feat of the jolly Mark, and as travelers, in those days, usually slept in their clothes, they generally passed the night without significant discomfort. As others arrived, the last going to bed always had the blankets. So it was that forty dusty, hopeful, tired, and generally uncomplaining emigrants or adventurous explorers who went up a ladder, two by two, to Mark Beaubien's sleeping loft were all covered with one pair of blankets. It is true, it was sometimes said, that on a frosty morning, there were frequent charges of blanket-stealing. Grumbling was heard, coupled with rough words similar to those formerly used by the army in Flanders, but the great heart of Mark was sufficient for the occasion, for, at such times, he would only charge half price for lodging to those who were disposed to complain. 

Excerpts from Benjamin F. Barker's personal letters to his brother Jacob Barker as Chicago incorporates in 1833.

Benjamin F. Barker rented a cabin for $3 a month by September 1832 at Chicago when he first arrived.

Benjamin F. Barker rented a cabin for $3 a month by September 1832 at Chicago when he first arrived. In a letter to his brother in the East, he reported that money was plentiful and requested salt and flour. 

By January 1833 he chopped wood to feed his family, the only work available. Barker observed that the situation of the Indians was desperate with thousands starving. In March Barker rented a farm eight miles to the north (to the southside of today's Rogers Park community) and asked for a strong wagon and barrels of salt. Barker subscribed to the Chicago Democrat in November. 

Chicago incorporates as a town on August 12, 1833, with a population of 350.

In February 1834 Barker hauled wood to town with a small wagon and oxen and requested a stock of groceries. By March, Barker opened a grocery in town and had built a house for his family, reporting in May that competition was great and liquor was in great demand. By the end of July, he wrote from Juliet [Joliet], "money was scarce in Chicago where a grocery (the term 'grocery' had a different meaning then) existed on every corner, and the country was delightful." 

Letters to Jacob A. Barker are preserved at the Chicago History Museum.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.