| Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable |
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BIOGRAPHY Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable first arrived on the western shores of Lake Michigan around 1779. Born in Saint-Marc , Sainte Domingue (present-day Haiti ), he built the first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river just east of the present Michigan Avenue Bridge on the north bank. Chicago Public Library He may have been born as early as the 1730s and no later than 1745 to a slave named Suzanna and a French pirate mate named Pointe du Sable who served about the ''Black Sea Gull''.Patricia Leeds. ''Du Sable's Pioneer Role is Recalled''. '' Chicago Tribune '', July 15, 1976. p.N2. Suzanna may have been killed in a Spanish raid on Haiti, and perhaps Jean Baptiste escaped by swimming out to his father's ship. After his father sent him to study at a Catholic school in France , du Sable and a friend, Jacques Clamorgan, traveled to Louisiana and then to Michigan , where he married a Potawatomi woman name Kittahawa (fleet-of-foot). To marry her, the twenty-five year old Jean Bapitiste had to become a member of her tribe, taking a eagle as his tribal symbol.''The Collected Works of Langston Hughes'', Langston Hughes, University of Missouri Press, p. 217, 2001 The Potawatomi called him "Black Chief," and he became a high-ranking member of the tribe. They had a son and daughter, Jean and Susanne. Du Sable's grand-daughter, Eulalia, was the first non-Indian born in Chicago. Before it was anything else, on the land now known as Pioneer Court , thirty years before Fort Dearborn was established on the banks of the Chicago River . By the time he sold to John Kinzie 's frontman, Jean La Lime , for 6,000 livres,"Historic Paper Will Be Filed in City Today" Chicago Daily Tribune August 26, 1954. p.10. his property included a house, two barns, horse-drawn mill, bakehouse, poultry house, dairy and a Smokehouse .Keenan Heise. ''Jean Baptiste Point du Sable'' During the Revolutionary War , he was imprisoned briefly by the British at Detroit , Michigan , on suspicion of being a US spy.Charles Balesi. ''The Time of the French in the Heart of North America, 1673-1818.'' Alliance Française. He also helped George Rogers Clark in his Capture Of Vincennes during the war. From the summer of 1780 until May of 1784, du Sable managed the Pinery, a huge tract of woodlands claimed by British Lt. Patrick Sinclair on the St. Clair River in eastern Michigan. Du Sable and his family lived at a cabin at the mouth of the Pine River in what is now the city of St. Clair.Mitts, Dorothy Marie, ''That Noble Country'', Dorrance & Co., Philadelphia, pp. 44-46, 1968 (Mitts cites her source as "the old Day Book and Ledger" of the Pinery.) In in 1813, where his granddaughter lived. He died in 1818, the year Illinois became a state, and is buried in St. Charles. He was buried in an unmarked grave in St. Borromeo Cemetery until a granite marker was erected in 1968. The deed books in the office of the St. Charles County Recorder of Deeds do not support the assertions of some authors that du Sable sold land to Alexander McNair, who would become the first governor of Missouri. Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, In St. Charles, Missouri 1800-1807 , by Kris Zapalac Ph.D., ASRI Historical Preservation, Spring 2005 LEGACY AND HONORS DuSable High School is a , Dinah Washington , Harold Washington , and Redd Foxx . Dr. Margaret Taylor-Burroughs , a prominent African-American artist and writer and co-founder with her husband of the DuSable Museum of African-American History, taught at the school for twenty-three years. The DuSable Museum of African American History, on Chicago's South Side, is named in his honor. Chicago commemorated du Sable's homestead in 1912 with a plaque on the corner of Kinzie and Pine Streets, and he appears in a 1965 frieze created for the Illinois Centennial Building. ''Jean Baptiste Point DuSable: The first resident on the City on the Lake'' DuSable Harbor is located in the heart of downtown Chicago at the foot of Randolph Street . DuSable Park is an urban park (3.24 acres) in Chicago currently awaiting redevelopment. It was originally announced in 1987 by then Mayor Harold Washington . The park is to be named after du Sable. Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable homesite is listed in the National Register Of Historic Places , as a National Historic Landmark on May 11, 1976. It is located at what is now 401 North Michigan Avenue in the Near North Side community area of Chicago. Currently the 35-story Equitable Building is located there. Equitable Building In recognition of his pioneering role, the US Postal Service issued a Black Heritage Series, 22-cent stamp, in honor of entrepreneur and diplomat on February 20, 1987. REFERENCES SOURCES
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