Chicago Tribune, June 23, 1865
OBITUARY
Maj. John H. Kinzie.
Our community will learn with profound regret the death of Majr. John H. Kinzie (July 7, 1803 – June 19, 1865), which took place on Wednesday afternoon, a few miles from Pittsburgh, on a train of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad, on which he and his family were passengers. Deceased has been for some time past a severe sufferer from an affection of a dropsical character in his chest, though not wholly incapacitating him from the performance of his duty as Paymaster in the army, stationed at this point. By the advice of his physicians, however, he had been persuaded to seek a furlough for thirty days, in the hope that he might be benefited by a tour among the mountains of Pennsylvania. He left his home for that purpose, his wife and son accompanying him. His friends here, up to present writing, are only informed that a sudden determination of his malady to the heart has closed his useful and honorable career. The remains are now on their way to this city, to be consigned by sorrowing friends to their last resting place.
The death of Major Kinzie is an event of more than ordinary interest in the associations it awakens. He was the oldest living white settler in this city, and probably in Illinois. Though still in his useful prime, with vigor scarcely impaired by years, his career covers the whole period of the development of the great West. His history is the whole history of this city, and is associated with every stage of its progress, it is sixty-one years since he reached a home where Chicago now stands, a year old infant in the household of an Indian trader. He was born at Sandwich, C. W., on the Detroit river, July 7, 1803. His father, John Kinzie, a Canadian by birth, passed his early life in New York, and an adventurous boy found his way back to Quebec, where he began to make his own way in life. Subsequently on the removal of his family to Detroit Michigan, he came again under their roof. In early manhood the senior Kinzie married the daughter of a British officer, and entered into the Indian trade, having establishments at Sandusky, Maumee, and about the year 1800, at St. Joseph. The Kinzie family came to Chicago the year the first fort was built, and from this place the elder Kinzie pushed his trading points still further west, all contributing to the parent one at Chicago. From all these outer posts, the Menomonees, at Milwaukee; the Winnebagoes and Pottawattomies, on Rock River, the Kickapoos, in the Saugamon valley; the furs and peltries found their way to Chicago, and thence by lake to Mackinac. Of such parentage and with such associations, young Kinzie passed his boyhood, identified with the first rude framework of civilized society in the now teeming and wealthy communities of the West. Cut off from the world at large, with no society but the military, the Kinzie family made their home in a neat cottage in what is now the North Division on the present site of the Lake House. They were here during the trying and doubtful hours of the first awakening of Indian vengeance; were sheltered in the fort in the shock of the massacre of 1812,. The senior Kinzie was a man of great influence among the Indians. He died in this city in 1823.
In 1828 John H. Kinzie was appointed by Piesident Adams, Indian agent to the Winnebagoes, and was stationed at Fort Winnebago, now Portage City, Wisconsin. He was then twenty-fire years of age. Thoroughly versed in Indian life and craft, and inheriting even more than his father’s skill and influence over the Indians, he rendered effective service to the Government by holding back the Winnebagoes from joining Blackhawk. At that time the whole of the now fair State of Wisconsin was a humble appendage to Michigan, under the inclusive name of Brown county.
From Fort Winnebago, in 1833, Mr. Kinzie returned to Chicago, with the growth and progress of which he has, since that time, been prominently and honorably connected,
He has been liberal, energetic, intelligent, and his name will stand identified with the most important features of the early growth of this section. To give the full details of such a life as his has been, is to retrace the stages of the progressive development of Chicago. Once he filled the highest municipal office. He was earnest and ardent in the measure of building the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and for ten years subsequent to its completion was prominently connected with its management as Canal Collector in this city. The outbreak of the war found him among the most zealous of the advocates for prompt action. His own spirit was fully shared by two noble sons who devoted their services to the Republic. One—his eldest son and namesake—gave his life, perishing in a naval engagement on White River in the summer of 1862, on the gunboat Mound City, to which he was attached. The second and only surviving son, Arthur, served through the term of enlistment of Battery A, Chicago Light Artillery, and re-enlisted, entering an Illinois cavalry regiment.
Since his appointment in 1862, Major Kinzie had filled the position of Paymaster, bringing to the duties of the position the business experience snd tact of his years of training. He leaves a wife and a son and daughter. The former was herself the daughter of an early pioneer in this State, the late Arthur Magill, Esq., of Ottawa. With the adventurous and useful career of her lamented husband in the early day of the West, Mrs. Kinzie was associated, and with skillful pen has grouped its leading incidents in a published narrative which will be more and more valuable as a record, as year after year adds to the developed wealth and progress of communities whose growth was thus entirely within the period of the honored lite now laid down. The last his contemporaries, the death or Maj. Kinzie turns the final page in the first volume of the annals of this city, and surrenders the last survivorship of those who looked out upon prairie and woodland where Chicago was to stand. It is rare that the sum of a simple human life so honorably and usefully enshrines so much that perhaps to human progress.
Chicago Evening Mail, September 20, 1870
The death of Mrs John A Kinzie, formerly of this city was caused by the taking of morphine pills under the belief that they were quinine pills
Daily Milwaukee News, September 21, 1870
Death of an Estimable Lady in Chicago by Mistake.—The Chicago Times of yesterday reports the following circumstances relating to the death of Mrs. John A. Kinzie, a lady well known by many residents of Wisconsin:
She had been suffering from s slight oppression on the chest, and told the servant girl to go to the doctors and get her two quinine pills, the use of which always gave her relief when she was so affected. The girl delivered the message to the doctor’s wife, who, instead of telling the doctor that Mrs. Kinzie wanted quinine pills, asked him for morphine pills. Mrs. Kinzie took one of the pills, and shortly after complained that she felt strangely unwell, and expressed a fear that some mistake had been made. Her daughter, Mrs. Gordon to assure her mother, herself took the other pill. In the meantime Mrs. Kinzie grew worse rapidly, and in a short time fell into a stupor which no efforts could arouse, and she passed away in the deadly sleep caused by the morphine, Mrs. Gordon soon felt the effects of the pill she herself had taken, but by unremitting exertions she was kept awake, and by the free use of emetics the influence of the poison was counteracted. Though brought very low, she is at present doing well, and no fears are now felt for her recovery.
- Kinzie Mansion
He made his permanent home in Chicago in 1834, the year after Chicago was incorporated as a town. President Harrison made him registrar of public lands in 1841, and President Taylor in 1849 made him receiver of public moneys. Joining the Union Army in 1861, he was made paymaster.
Mr. Kinzie was married on August 9, 1830, to Miss Juliette A. Magill of Middletown, Connecticut. They made their home at the northeast corner of Cass Street and Michigan Avenue. There were four children: John H. Kinzie, Jr., killed in battle in 1862 while serving on a gunboat; Arthur, who served in the Chicago Light Artillery, and later in the cavalry; George, who entered the army and died in 1892; and a daughter, Eleanor, who became Mrs. William W. Gordon of Savannah, Georgia. Eleanor’s daughter, Juliette Gordon, was an American youth leader and the founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA in 1912.
Mrs. Kinzie, author of the famous historical work. Wau-bun, died in 1870 after taking morphine in mistake for quinine.
John H. Kinzie himself, after a long and useful life, died as perhaps he would have wished. It was on June 21, 1865, when he had obtained leave of absence from the army and was in a train on his way to the seaside to rest. A blind beggar asked for alms, and Mr. Kinzie died of heart failure while in the act of taking a coin from his pocket to relieve the blind man.
- At 401 N. Michigan Avenue (Equitable Building Plaza) on the south side center pylon near the Chicago River railing.
Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1897
First Child and First Bride.
Ellen Marion Kinzie, born under the roof of the old John Kinzie house, in December, 1804, was the first white child born in Chicago. Her early childhood was spent with Indian playmates, but later the little maiden was taken away to escape the dangers resulting from the hostilities of those times. She later returned to the city of her birth, and on July 20, 1823, became Chicago’s first bride, when she was married in the old home to Dr. Alexander Wolcott, who was Indian Agent. Dr. Wolcott died in 1830, and about six years later the widow was married to George C. Bates in Detroit. he died there on Aug. 9, 1860.
[…] and Sioux. That’s badass. He was so skilled at dealing with the area’s Indians, he was appointed private secretary to General Cass and accompanied a delegation of Winnebagoes to Washingto… to visit president John Quincy Adams. When he was 22 years old he was involved in a rescue of two […]