121623 Way Black History Fact The Black Founder of Chicago

take this, you know how you take it. But it's more reputable source than me, right, but there are more reputable sources. This just kind of gave me the format I needed for today. Sure forgive me anyway. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable was is regarded as the first permanent non native settler of what would later become Chicago, Illinois, and is recognized as the founder of Chicago. A school, museum, Harbor Park, bridge, and road have been named in his honor.

The site where he's settled, near the mouth of the Chicago River around seventeen eighty, is recognized as a National Historic Landmark. Now located in Pioneer Court Point Disable was of African descent, but little else is known of his early life prior to the seventeen seventies. During his career, the areas where he settled and traded around the Great Lakes and in the Illinois County country changed hands several

times between France, Britain, Spain, and the United States. Described as handsome and well educated, Point Disable married a Pottawamie Native American woman, Kiti Hawa, and they had two children. In seventeen seventy nine, during the American Revolutionary War, he was arrested by the British on suspicion of being an American patriot sympathizer. In the early seventeen eighties, he worked for the British Lieutenant Governor Governor of Michill Mackinach on an

estate at what is now Saint Clair, Michigan. Makes sense. Point Disables is first recorded as living at the mouth of the Chicago River in a trader's journal of early seventeen ninety. By then, he had established in an extensive and prosperous trading settlement in what would later become the city of Chicago. He sold his Chicago River property in eighteen hundred and moved to the port of Saint Charles, where he was licensed to run a ferry across the

Missouri River. Point Disable's successful role in developing the Chicago River settlement was little recognized until the mid twentieth century. There are no records of point Disable's life prior to the seventeen seventies, though it is known from sources during his life that he was of African descent. His birth date, place of birth, and parents are unknown. Juliette Kinsey, another early pioneer of Chicago, never met Point DuSable, but said in her eighteen fifty six Menmoir that he was quote

a native of Saint Domingo, the island of Hispanolia. This became generally accepted as his place of birth. Historian Milo Milton Quaif regarded Kinsey's account of Point Disable as largely fictitious and wholly unauthenticated, later putting forward a theory that

he was of African and French Canadian in origin. A historical novel published in nineteen fifty three helped to popularize the claim that Point Disable was born in seventeen forty five in Saint Mark and Sante Do Ming later known as Haiti if he was born outside of continental North America. There are some competing accounts as to whether he entered as a trader from north through French Canada or from

the south through French Louisiana. At some time in seventeen eighties, after the US achieved independence, Point Disable settled on the north bank of the Chicago River, close to its mouth. The earliest known record of Point Disabled living in Chicago is an entry that Heward made in his journal on May tenth, seventeen ninety during a journey from Detroit across Michigan through Illinois. Heward's party stopped at Point Disable's house

and wrote to Chicago Portage. They swapped their canoe for a puroaqu that belonged to Point Disable, and they brought bread, flour, and pork for him. Parish Georgian, who visited Chicago in seventeen ninety four, described him as a large and wealthy trader. So they're Chicago for you.