Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard Summary

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Chapter two started by mentioning how in 1818 Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard came to Chicago by a bateau with other voyageurs. He came with Antoine Deschamps, a French Canadian who was captivated by the heroic age of the French exploration in North America, he was also the “boss” or Le Bourgeois of the Illinois outfit. Deschamps took Hubbard, his apprentice clerk who shares his passion for the history of discovery, to Marquette’s grave. They made the trip around Lake Michigan to the Chicago River in twenty days. Hubbard died in Chicago in 1886, the year Louis Sullivan began work on the Auditorium Theater and Hotel. He was the men who came to Chicago when there was no Chicago to go to, they eulogized him as the man responsible for bringing the canal to Chicago, making it the city’s first shipping magnate and meat packer. …show more content…

Chicago’s transition from fur – trading outpost to a capitalist town, was a cultural revolution that Hubbard helped bring forward. By knowing Chicago’s history, it’s said to also know the Gurdon Hubbard story. Hubbard was born on August 22, 1802 in Vermont; his father, Elizur, was one of Windsor’s five lawyers and his mother was from Puritan stock. After his father lost their money they were forced to move to Montreal, where Elizur was able to make a decent living. When Hubbard was sixteen he signed to be a clerk for the American Fur Company headed to Michigan. He became friends with another clerk named John Harris Kinzie, whose father (John Kinzie) was a trader in Chicago. Hubbard made his first entry to Chicago on October 1, 1818. One day he and others had made preparations to cross the portage, where it convinces Hubbard the need for a canal critical since it was very muddy and filled with insects and animals. Hubbard later on, became head of Deschamp’s trading posts after the old man retired and later at Danville, where he established his headquarters in

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