  FORT DEARBORN RECORDS AT WASHINGTON. W WAR Department records, back of the war of 1812, are few and poor; partly, no doubt, for the reason that during that short struggle a British force, sailing up the Potomac, seized upon the defenceless little city of Washington and burned its public buildings with their contents. The Hon. Robert Lincoln, Secretary of War (under President Garfield) at the time of unveiling the Block House Tablet, May 21, 1881, kindly furnished to Mr. Wentworth copies of all documents on file relating to Fort Dearborn and its garrison, (Fergus' Hist., Series No. 16.) Extract from a letter written June 28, 1804, by General Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War under President Jefferson: Being of opinion that, for the general defence of our country, we ought not to rely upon fortifications, but on men and steel; and that works calculated for resisting batteries of cannon are necessary only for our principal seaports, I cannot conceive it useful or expedient to construct expensive works for our interior military posts, especially such as are intended merely to hold the Indians in check. I have therefore directed stockade works aided by block-houses to be erected at Vincennes, at Chikago, at or near the mouth of the Miami of the lakes, and at Kaskaskia, in conformity with the sketch herewith enclosed, each calculated for a full company; the block-houses to be constructed of timber slightly hewed, and of the most durable kind to be obtained at the respective places; the magazines for powder to be of brick, of a conic figure, each capable of receiving from fifty to one hundred barrels of powder. Establishments of the kind here proposed will, I presume, be necessary It will, I presume, be proper ultimately to extend palisades round the block-houses. Statement compiled from the Records of the Adjutant General's office in the case of Fort Dearborn, with copies of orders: Fort Dearborn, situated at Chicago, Ill., within a few yards of Lake Michigan. Latitude 41° 51' North; Longitude 87° 15' West. Post established by the United States forces in 1804. (From 1804-12 no records are on file.) August 15th, 1812, the garrison having evacuated the post and were en route for Ft. Wayne, under the command of Captain Nathan Heald, 1st U. S. Infantry, composed of 54 Regular Infantry, 12 Militia men, and one interpreter, was attacked by Indians to the number of between 400 and 500, of whom 15 were killed. Those of the garrison killed were Ensign George Ronan, 1st Infantry, Dr. Isaac Van Voorhis, Captain Wells, Interpreter, 24 enlisted men, U S. Infantry, and 12 Militia-men; 2 women and 12 children were also killed. The wounded were Captain Nathan Heald and Mrs. Heald. None others reported. The next day, August 16th, 1812, the post was destroyed by the Indians. Reoccupied about June 1816, Capt. Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry, commanding. The troops continued in occupation until October, 1823, when the post was evacuated and left in charge of the Indian agent; It was reoccupied Oct. 3rd, 1828. Capt. Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry, commanded the post from June 1816, to May 1817, Brevet Major D. Baker to June 1820; Captain Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry, to January 1821, Major Alex Cummings, 3rd Infantry, to October, 1821; Lieut. Col. J. McNeal, 3rd Infantry, to July 1823; Captain John Greene, 3rd Infantry, to October, 1823; post not garrisoned from October 1823, to October 1828. No returns of post on file prior to 1828. Copies of Orders. ORDER NO. 35. Adjutant General's Office, Washington, 27 May, 1823. The Major-General commanding the army directs that Fort Dearborn, Chicago, be evacuated, and that the garrison thereof be withdrawn to the headquarters of the 3rd regiment of Infantry. One company of the 3rd regiment of Infantry will proceed to Mackinac and relieve the company of artillery now stationed there, which, with the company of artillery at Fort Shelby, Detroit, will be withdrawn and ordered to the harbor of New York. The commanding General of the Eastern department, will give the necessary orders for carrying these movements into effect, as well as for the security of the public property at Forts Dearborn and Shelby. By order of Major-General Brown. (Signed) Chas. J. Nourse, Act'g Adjutant-General. ORDER NO. 44. Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, 19 August, 1828. (Extract.) In conformity with the directions of the Secretary of War, the following movements of the troops will be made. Two companies of the 5th regiment of Infantry to reoccupy Fort Dearborn, at the head of Lake Michigan; the remaining eight companies to proceed by the way of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers to Fort Howard, Green Bay, where the headquarters of the regiment will be established. Four Co's of the Reg't to constitute the garrison of Fort Howard; two Co's for the garrison of Michilimackinac, and two for that of Fort Brady. 4. The Quartermaster-General's department to furnish the necessary transportation and supplies for the movement and accommodation of the troops. The subsistence department to furnish the necessary supplies of provisions. The Surgeon-General to supply medical officers and suitable hospital supplies for the posts to be established and reoccupied. 5. The Commanding Generals of the Eastern and Western departments are respectively charged with the execution of this order as far as relates to their respective commands. By order of Major General Macomb, Major-General Commanding the Army. (Signed) R. Jones, Adjutant-General. ORDER NO. 16. Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, 23 Feb., 1832. (Copy.) The headquarters of the 2nd Regiment of Infantry are transferred to Fort Niagara. Lieut. Col. Cummings, with all the officers and men composing the garrison of Madison Barracks, Sackett's Harbor, will accordingly relieve the garrison of Fort Niagara; and Major Whistler, on being relieved by Lieut.-Col. Cummings, with all the troops under his command, will repair to Fort Dearborn (Chicago, Illinois) and garrison that post. Assistant Surgeon De Camp, now on duty at Madison Barracks, is assigned to duly at Fort Dearborn, and will accompany the troops ordered to that post. These movements will take place as soon as the navigation will permit. By order of Major-General Macomb. (Signed) R. Jones, Adjutant-General. GENERAL ORDER HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. NO. 80. Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, Nov. 30th, 1836. (Extract) I. The troops stationed at Fort Dearborn, Chicago, will immediately proceed to Fort Howard and join the garrison at By order of Alexander Macomb, Maj.-Gen. Com'd'g-in-Chief. (Signed) R. Jones, Adjutant-General. INTERIOR OF NEW FORT (1850), LAKE HOUSE IN THE DISTANCE. When the last fort was being demolished [1856] an old paper was found which bore internal evidence of being a survival from the first fort. How it could have survived the flames of 1812 is a mystery. Perhaps some brick bomb-proof magazine chanced to shelter it, and the builders of the new fort, finding it, laid it in a closet, where it remained, hidden and forgotten. One would like to see it to-day—if it also survived October 9, 1871! Permission is hereby given for one gill of whiskey each: Denison,[A] Dyer,[A] Andrews,[A] Keamble (?), Burman, J. Corbin,[A] Burnett, Smith,[A] McPherson, Hamilton, Fury[A], Grumond[A] (?), Morfitt, Lynch,[A] Locker,[A] Peterson,[A] P. Corbin,[A] Van Horn,
On December 29, 1836, the garrison was finally withdrawn from Fort Dearborn, and after its thirty-three years of stirring vicissitudes it passed into a useless old age, which lasted a score of years before its abandonment as a government possession. In fact, one of its buildings—a great, barn-like, wooden hospital—was standing, in use as a hospital storehouse, up to 1871, when the great fire obliterated it, with nearly all else that was ancient in Chicago. WAUBANSA STONE WITH GREAT FIRE RELICS. An exception to this destruction and the fast gathering cloud of oblivion, is to be found in an old red granite boulder, with a rude human face carved on it, which stood in the center of the fort esplanade, and which is now (1891) one of our few antiquarian treasures. It is nearly eight feet high by three feet in greatest diameter, and weighs perhaps 4,000 pounds. In prehistoric times the Indians used the concave top for a corn-mill, and for many, many weary hours must the patient and long-suffering Many persons have looked on it as a relic of prehistoric art—the sacrificial stone of an Aztec teocalli perhaps—but Mr. Hurlbut gives the cold truth; more modern, though scarcely less romantic. He says it was set up in the fort, and soldiers, sick and well, used it as a lounging-place. Sometimes it served as a pillory for disorderly characters, and it was a common expression or threat, that for certain offenses the offender would be "sent to the rock." Waubansa was a Chicago chief, and a soldier-sculptor tried to depict his features on the stone; and (to quote Mr. Hurlbut): "The portrait pleased the Indians, the liege friends of the chief, greatly; for a party of them, admitted into the block-house to see it, whooped and leaped as if they had achieved a victory, and with uncouth gestures they danced in a triumphant circle around the rock." In 1837 ... Daniel Webster paid a visit to the West, and took Chicago in his route.... The conveyance was a barouche with four elegant creams attached. Mr. Webster was accompanied by his daughter and son. Every wheel-vehicle, every horse and mule in town, it is said, were in requisition that day, and the senator was met some miles out by a numerous delegation from this new city, who joined in the procession.... It was the fourth of July, the column came over Randolph Street bridge, and thence to the parade-ground within the fort. There were guns at the fort, which were eloquent, of course, though the soldiers had left some weeks before. The foundation of all this outcry about Mr. Webster is, that the base and platform on which that gentleman stood when he made the speech within the fort, was the rock, the same Waubansa stone.... Justin Butterfield (who stood directly in front of the senator) swung his hat and cheered the speaker. The "statue" was pierced to form the base of a fountain, and was set up as one of the curiosities of the great Sanitary Commission Fair, held in 1865, in Dearborn Park, in aid of the sick and wounded in the war for the Union. In 1856 it was adopted as a relic by the Hon. Isaac N. Arnold—member of Congress during the war and one of the staunchest and ablest of patriots, and most devoted of friends to the soldiers—who moved it to his home, in Erie street. Mr. Arnold's house was burned with the rest in the great fire of 1871, and old "Waubansa" Who were the victims of August fifteenth, 1812? What were the names of the killed, the wounded, the tortured, the missing? This is a question to which only the merest apology for an answer can be given. In tens of thousands of cases the very act of dying for one's country forbids the possibility of becoming known to fame. Nameless graves dot our land from north to south, and from east to west, especially from the Susquehanna to the Rio Grande and from the Ohio to the Gulf. Heaven knows who were those dead, and who they might have become if they had not died when and where they did. Let us hope that somewhere in the universe they have their record—on earth they are forgotten. I have aimed at recording every surviving name of the dwellers in Chicago up to the massacre. As an effort toward that end, I give, on the next page, the last muster and pay-roll of the troops at the old fort, as shown by existing records. It is headed: "Muster roll of a company of Infantry under the command of Captain Nathan Heald, in the First Regiment of the United States, commanded by Colonel Jacob Kingsbury, from Nov. 30, when last mustered, to December 31, 1810." It concludes with a certificate in the following form, identical, by the way, with the formula in use in our army to this day (1893): Recapitulation.—Present, fit for duty, 50; sick, 5; unfit for service, 3; on command, 1; on furlough, 1; discharged, 6. Total, 67. We Certify on honor that this muster-roll exhibits a true statement of the company commanded by Captain Nathan Heald, and that the remarks set opposite their names are accurate and just. J. Cooper, S. Mate. Ph. O'Strander, Lieutenant commanding the Company,
* Men who are likely to have been in service at the time of the massacre. A
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