Mark Beaubien

---

Biographies

---

History of Chicago, Volume I, A. T. Andreas, 1884

MARK BEAUBIEN, a younger brother of General J. B. Beaubien, was born in Detroit in the year 1800. When very young, he married in that city, Mademoiselle Monique Nadeau; the children of this union being sixteen, five of whom—Josette, Mark Jr., Oliver, Joseph and Emily were born in Detroit. In 1826, Mr. Beaubien came to Chicago to visit his brother, and decided to make the place his home. He tells the story of his arrival thus: “I arrived in Chicago in the year of 1826, from Detroit; came with my family by team; no road only Indian trail. I had to hire an Indian to show me the road to Chicago.I camped outdoors and bought a log house from Jim Kinzie. There was no town laid out; didn’t expect no town. When they laid out the town, my house laid out in the street; when they laid the town I bought two lots where I built the old Sauganash, the first frame house in Chicago.” The frame building mentioned above, and called “the Sauganash” in honor of the Chief Billy Caldwell, was at the southeast corner of the present Lake anf Market streets. The old log house which Mr. Beaubien bought of

“Jim Kinzie,” formed a wing of the new building which is described in Waubun as “a pretentious, white two-story building with bright blue wooden shutters, the admiration of all the little circle at Wolf Point.” Mr. Beaubien commenced hotel keeping in the log cabin which he bought of Mr. Kinzie, and continued the business in the Sauganash, remaining in the latter, which became a very famous house of entertainment, until 1834. In the latter year he completed another house on the northwest corner of Wells and Lake streets, which was called the “Exchange Coffee House,” and first kept by Mr. and Mrs. John Murphy. It seems probable that the Sauganash was afterwards called the “Eagle Exchange,” as one of Mr. Beaubien’s daughters, Mrs. Emily (Beaubien) Le Page, states that she once lived in the first frame building in Chicago, “called the Eagle Exchange on Market street, near the corner of Lake.” Early in 1831, at a meeting of the Commissioners Court of Cook County, Mr. Beaubien filed his bond with James Kinzie as security, agreed to pay into the county treasury fifty dollars, and was licensed to run a ferry across the South Branch of the Chicago River—the first ferry in the town. All citizens of Cook County were to be ferried free with their traveling apratus,” but outsiders were to pay specified rates. A scow was purchased of Samuel Miller for sixty-five dollars, and Mark entered upon his duties. During that year the Canal Commissioners held a meeting at Chicago, and the extra ferriage on their account was paid by Cook County. The ferryman charged for his services $7.33. He was licensed as a merchant during 1831, and the combined duties of landlord and storekeeper, with occasional hours of recreation in the way of horse-racing, caused perhaps some want of attention to the ferry, and the court accordingly ordered that the ferry should be kept running “from daylight in the morning, until dark, without stopping,” for the accommodation of Cook County passengers. In the same year he received a license to keep tavern, and probably soon after opened the Sauganash. When Chicago was incorporated as a town in 1833, the first election of trustees was at the house of Mr. Beaubien, which was ever a favorite resort both for purposes of business and of amusement; the merry good-souled landlord, and his wife, who is described as “a noble woman, and devoted Christian mother,” making the Sauganash a place to be remembered by all early travelers. Mr. Beaubien married for his second and last wife Elizabeth Matthews of Aurora, by whom he had seven children. He lived in Chicago for many years, and was the last light-house keeper in the place, being appointed by President Buchanan, at a salary of $350. He was one of the leaders in the organization of St. Mary’s Church, the first Catholic society in the city, toward the construction of which he paid liberally. He was a kind friend to the Indians, who at their treaty with Government in 1834 conveyed “to their good friend, Mark Beaubien” a reservation of sixty-four acres of land at the mouth of the Calumet, of which he received the patent signed by Martin Van Buren, nearly forty years later—having been unconscious of the gift during all those years. When Mark Beaubien came to Chicago he brought with him from Detroit a fiddle, which in his hands discoursed sweet music in the old days, and will always be remembered in connection with the old Frenchman, who, till the last, loved his instrument, and at his death bequeathed it to the Calumet Club of Chicago, where it remains, a valued possession. Mr. Beaubien is described as being in his prime “a tall athletic fine appearing man, Frenchy and polite, frank, open-hearted, generous to a fault, and, in his glory at a horse-race.” His favorite dress on “great occasions” was a swallow-tail coat with brass buttons, and, if in the summer, light nankeen trousers. His quaint old song, in regard to the surrender of General Hull at Detroit in 1812, of which he was a witness, was sung with as much gusto, as Monie Musk and Fisher’s Hornpipe were played, and the young people of the new generation listened to his music and stories with as much pleasure as did his companions in early Chicago. His last visits to Chicago were in 1879 and 18S0, at the time of the Calumet Club receptions to old settlers, where his vivacity and enthusiasm gave no token of the approaching end, then so near. The children of Mr. Beaubien, “as given in the Chicago Times, in an article entitled By-gone Days, March 26, 1876, were Josette, Mark, Oliver, Joseph and Emily, (born in Detroit), Soliston, David, George, Napoleon, Edward, Helena, Elizabeth, Gwinny, Frances, Monique and an infant who died unnamed—children of Mark and Monique Beaubien; and Robert, Frank, Mary, Ida, Jimmy, Jesse and Slidel, children by his second marriage. He died on the 16th of April, 1881, in Kankakee, Ill., at the house of George Mathews, who married his daughter Mary.

---

Chicago And Its Makers, Paul Gilbert and Charles Lee Bryson, 1929

Mark Beaubien
In all the history of Chicago, there is no more delightful figure than that of the rollicking, fiddling, singing, innkeeper, merchant, ferryman and good fellow, Mark Beaubien. From the year 1832 when a lively, careless, adventurous young blade from Detroit, he came to this city, he wove a brilliant thread of vivacity into the sometimes somber fabric of the social life of the settlement, until, at the age of eighty-one, he died peacefully at Kankakee.

Mark Beaubien was a valuable citizen, a consistent Roman Catholic, implicitly trusted by the Indians as their “good friend,” and rendered priceless service to Chicago by standing between the settlers and the Indians in time of threatened trouble. Yet, because he took life so lightly, and insisted on being sparkling when others pulled long faces, he is better known for the joy he put into life of the settlement rather than the solid services he rendered.

He was born in the last year eighteenth century, 1800, at Detroit, and there grew to manhood. As a boy of twelve he witnessed much of the opéra bouffe war between England and the United States as it was waged in and around Detroit, and was a witness to the inglorious surrender of General Hull to the British forces. This incident made such an impression upon the lad, who saw all the ludicrous points, that he made a ballad of it, and many years afterward used to delight the guests in his inn by singing it to his own accompaniment on the violin.

It was in the year 1826 that Mark came from Detroit to Chicago on a visit to his brother, General J. B. Beaubien, who had visited Chicago at intervals for many years, and who had permanently settled here as agent for the American Fur Company. Mark brought his family, Mrs. Monique Nadeau Beaubien, and the five children they then had – eleven others were born later. In his account of this journey Mark writes in “Chicago Antiquities”;

I came with my family by team; no road, only Indian trails. I had to hire an Indian to show me the way to Chicago. I camped out doors and bought a log house from Jim Kinzie. There was no town; didn’t expect no town. When they laid out the town, my house laid out in the street; when they laid out the town I bought two two lots where I built the old Sauganash the first frame house in Chicago.

Chicago 1884 biographer, A. T. Andreas says was an error, as there had already been a frame house built for Billy Caldwell.

---

Sauganash Hotel and the Sauganash Hotel at Wolf Point in 1830

---

Many of the delicious air of the romance which surrounds the history of Mark Beaubien also engulfs the Sauganash, the famous hotel of pioneer days where Mark and his good wife and their immense family of children lived, and where he conducted a merry house of entertainment, at the southeast corner of Market (S. Wacker Drive) and Lake Streets.

Mark took on many other duties as the years passed. In 1831, on payment of fifty dollars, he obtained from the county commissioners a license to run a ferry across the South Branch of the Chicago River at Wolf Point. He was permitted to charge non-residents a fee, but all who lived in Cook County were to be ferried for free.

He played his part in public life, too. For it was in his house that the election was held, in 1833, at which the settlers voted to incorporate the Town of Chicago. He helped organize the first Catholic Church in Chicago, St. Mary’s and gave liberally of his money to its support. The Indians so loved him for his fairness to them that they voted him sixty-four acres of land at the mouth of the Calumet River – which he did not know for almost forty years. When he received his letters patent in 1874 he found it had been signed by President Martin Van Buren.

Mrs. Beaubien died, and late in his life Mark married Miss Elizabeth Mathieu of Aurora. Seven children were born to them. Their daughter, Mary Beaubien, married her cousin, George Mathieu.

---

Mark Beaubien’s Tavern. The Sauganash, in 1835

---