This home is generally considered to be the first permanent, non-native, residence in Chicago, Illinois. Around 1764, Du Sable is thought to have been shipwrecked near New Orleans, where he was bound with his childhood friend Jacques Clemorgan.

Point du Sable settled on the north bank of the Chicago Riverclose to its mouth at some time in the 1780s.

The expedition headed by Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette in 1673, though probably not the first Europeans to visit the area, are the first recorded to have crossed the Chicago Portageand travelled along the Chicago River. The first non-native to re-settle in the area may have been a trader named Guillory, who might have had a trading-post near Wolf Pointon the Chicago River in around 1778. This included a house, two barns, a horse drawn mill, a bakehouse, a poultry house, a dairy and a smokehouse. All Rights Reserved.

As well as this bridge!I love how there are always flowers on or around the Sculpture of DuSable.Source: Statue Stories Chicagostatuestorieschicago.com…Also See:chicagopublicart.blogspo…Another interesting article about DuSable is:interactive.wttw.com/dus…, He was of African-Caribbean descent and was born in Haiti in 1745.In 1779, the British arrested him as an American sympathizer.But his claim to fame is being regarded as the first permanent resident of Chicago, IL.

This footnote has led many scholars to assume that Point du Sable had settled in Chicago by 1779,  however letters written by traders in the late 1770s suggest that Point du Sable was at this time settled at the mouth of Trail Creek(Rivière du Chemin) at what is now Michigan City, Indiana.

© 2020 Embassy of Haiti in Washington, DC.

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable was a free African American born around or before the year 1750 in Haiti. Historian and Point du Sable biographer John F. Swenson has called these claims “elaborate, undocumented assertions … in a fanciful biography”. The earliest known record of Point du Sable living in Chicago is an entry for May 10, 1790 in the journal of Hugh Heward, which he wrote during a journey he made from Detroit across Michigan and through Illinois. The house was a 22-by-40-foot (6.7 × 12 m) log cabin filled with fine furniture and paintings. Dr. Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, a prominent African-American artist and writer taught at the school for twenty-three years. The Mission of the Guardian Angel was somewhere in the vicinity of Chicago from 1696 until it was abandoned in around 1700.

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. In 1800 he sold his farm to John Kinzie’s frontman, Jean La Lime, for 6,000 livres;  the bill of sale, which was re-discovered in 1913 in an archive in Detroit, outlined all of the property Point du Sable owned as well as many of his personal artifacts. He was able to access some education and learn several languages, including French, Spanish, English, and many Indian dialects. Point 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. DuSable High School is a Bronzeville high school that opened in 1934. Matson continues to state that Point du Sable became a zealous Catholic in order to convince a Jesuit missionary to declare him chief of the local Native Americans, and left Chicago when the natives refused to accept him as their chief.

In 1965 a plaza called Pioneer Court was built on the site of his homestead as part of the construction of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of America building.

He has become known as the “Founder of Chicago” and the place where he settled at the mouth of the Chicago River in the 1780s is recognized as a National Historic Landmark, now located in Pioneer Court. Fax: 202-745-7215. .css-12anxc3{width:24px;height:24px;display:inline-block;vertical-align:middle;position:relative;overflow:hidden;top:-0.1em;fill:currentColor;}.css-12anxc3::before{position:absolute;display:block;left:0;}.css-12anxc3::after{content:'';display:block;position:absolute;left:0;right:0;top:0;bottom:0;}.css-12anxc3 svg{position:absolute;width:100%;height:100%;fill:inherit;display:block;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;}18, Find more Landmarks near Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable Monument. In Chicago, Point du Sable is recognized as it’s founder and his name is honored around the city on a bridge, museum, park and in other areas. The Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable Homesite is the location where, around the 1780s, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable located his home and trading post. In a footnote to a poem titled Speech to the Western Indians, (published 1813) Arent DePeyster, British commandant at Fort Michilimackinac from 1774 to 1779, noted that “Baptist Point de Saible” was “handsome”, “well educated”, and “settled in Eschecagou”. After Point du Sable, Antoine Ouilmette is the next recorded resident of Chicago; he claimed to have settled at the mouth of the Chicago River in July 1790, a few months after Hugh Heward visited Point du Sable.

The campaign was successful however, and a replica of Point du Sable’s cabin was presented as part of the “background of the history of Chicago.” In 2002 an archaeological investigation of the grave site was initiated by the African Scientific Research Institute at the University of Illinois-Chicago. From the summer of 1780  until May 1784, Point du Sable managed the Pinery, a tract of woodlands claimed by British Lt. Patrick Sinclair on the St. Clair River in eastern Michigan. Quaife later put forward a theory that he was of French-Canadian origin. According to Wikipedia.Bridge Named in His Honor:In 2010-The Michigan Avenue Bridge was renamed to DuSable Bridge in honor of Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable.About the Artist and Audio:Furthermore, a Bronze Bust of DuSable to honor him was sculpted by Erik Brome a sculptor from Woodstock.