"Jean (prounce John) Baptiste Du Sable."(or Point de Sable,Point au Sable,Point Sable;before 1750 -August 28,1818)

Is widely regarded as the first permanent resident of Chicago,Illinois.Little is known of his life prior to the 1770s.In 1779,he was living on the site of present-day Michigan City,Indiana when he was arrested by the British on suspicion of being an American sympathizer.In the early 1780s he worked for the British on an estate at what is now the city of St. Clair Michigan before moving to settle at the mouth of the Chicago River in the 1780s is recognized as a National Historic Landmark,now located  in Pioneer Court.There is no known record of Point Du Sable's life prior to the 1770s; his birth,and parents are unknown.Juliette Kinzie,in her 1856 memoir,stated that he was a native of Saint-Domingue,and this has become generally accepted as his place of birth.Historian Milo Milton Quaife later put forward a theory that he was of French-Canadian origin.Point du Sable descctible himself as "a free mulatto man.He was married to a Potawatomi woman named Cathrine some time in the 1770s.They had a son named Jean and a daughter named Susanne.Aren't Depeyster,British commandant at Mackinac,writing in 1813 said that in 1779 "Baptist Point  de Sable"was "handsome" "well educated"and "settled in Eschecagou.Other  sources,closer to 1779,state Point du Sable was settled at the mouth of Trail Creek (Riviera du Chemin) at what is now Michigan City, Indiana.In August 1779 Point du Sable was arrested at Trail Creek by the British and imprisoned briefly in Fort Michilimackinac in Michigan  on suspicion of being a spy for the United States who had helped George Rogers Clark in his capture of Vincennes.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.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.Point du Sable settled on the north bank of the Chicago River close to its mouth at some time in the 1780s.The earliest known record of Point du sable living in Chicago is an entry May  10,1790 in the journal of Hugh Heward,which he wrote during a journey he made from Detroit across Michigan and through Illinois.Heward party stopped at Point du Sable's house en route to the Chicago portage;They swapped their canoe for a pirogue that belonged that Point du Sable,and they brought bread,flour and pork from him.Perrish Grignon,who visited Chicago in about 1794,is said to have described Point du Sable as a large man who was a wealthy trader.In 1800 he sold his farm to John Kinzie's frontman Jean La Lime,6,000 livres;his property included a house,two barns,horse drawn mill,bakehouse,poultry house,dairy, and a smokehouse.His home was a 22-foot (6.7) by 40-foot (12m) log cabin filled with fine furniture and paintings.In 1913,Milo Milton Quaife,an historical librarian with the State Historical Society of Wisconsin,discoverd the bill of sale from Point du Sable to Jean La Lime in an archive in Detroit.This document outlined all of the property Point du Sable owned as well as many of his personal artifacts.After Jean sold his property in Chicago he moved to St.Charles St. Charles,Missouri.He died in 1818,and was buried in St.Charles,in an unmarked grave in St.Borromeo Cemetery.