Jean Baptiste Point du Sable’s wife was a Potawatomi woman named Kitihawa (also known as Catherine). Married in a Native American tradition in the 1770s and later in a Catholic ceremony on October 27, 1788, in Cahokia, she partnered with him to establish the first permanent settlement in what is now Chicago.
By 1778, DuSable had established himself in the area that would become Chicago and, in that year, married Kitihawa, a Potawatomi woman also known as Catherine. The pair settled by a place the Potawatomi called Eschecagou, on the north bank of the Chicago River at its junction with Lake Michigan.
He was commissioned by the French governor in Missouri to operate a ferry across the Missouri River. DuSable, however never prospered as he did in what would become Chicago. In 1818 he died almost penniless and was buried in a Catholic cemetery in St. Charles.
What are some fun facts about Jean Baptiste Point du Sable?
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (born before 1750 – died August 28, 1818) is known as the first person to live permanently in what is now Chicago, Illinois. Because of this, he is called the "Founder of Chicago." Many places are named after him, like a school, a museum, a harbor, a park, and a bridge.
The first permanent settler in Chicago was a black man named Jean Baptiste Point DuSable. He may have been born on the island of Haiti around 1745 to a French mariner and a mother who was a slave of African descent.
Traveling monument seeks to teach story of hidden Chicago co-founder Kitihawa DuSable
Is Chicago more Irish or Polish?
German Americans made up 7.3% of the population, and numbered at 199,789; Irish Americans also made up 7.3% of the population, and numbered at 199,294. Polish Americans now made up 6.7% of Chicago's population, and numbered at 182,064.
This is evidenced in DNA ancestry read outs where the average Haitian consistently tests at nearly 85-95 percent sub-Saharan African DNA. The remaining population of Haiti is primarily composed of Mulattoes, Europeans, Asians, and Arabs. Hispanic residents in Haiti are mostly Cuban and Dominican.
An independent dive team found 97 cars in the Chicago River while searching for clues tied to a 1970 cold case. No remains were discovered yet in the search for Edward and Stephania Andrews. Authorities are reviewing next steps; 75 vehicles have been cleared so far.
Baptiste is a gender-neutral name of French origin, meaning "one who baptizes" or "to dip." It comes from the Greek βάπτω (bapto), which translates to "to dip," and is derived from the Latin Baptista.
Sacagawea died shortly after giving birth to her second child, a girl she named Lisette, in 1812 at Fort Manuel, a fur-trading post located in what is now present-day South Dakota. Clark adopted Lisette and raised her as his own as well.
The name Chicago was first recorded in 1688, where it appears as Chigagou, an Algonquian word meaning “onion field.” Chicago's first permanent settler in 1779 was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a trapper and merchant credited with building the trading post that evolved into Chicago.
About a year later, when Sacagawea was only 13 years old, her captors forced her to marry French trapper Toussaint Charbonneau. Marriage was a common way for French trappers and Indigenous communities to solidify their trade relationships in the Great Lakes region.
The Chicago area is located on ancestral lands of indigenous tribes, such as the Council of the Three Fires--comprised of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations--as well as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, Fox, Kickapoo, and Illinois Nations.
Anastasia Hille reprises her role as Celia Baptiste, Julien's kind and supportive wife. Though Julien has retired, when an old friend calls in a favor, it is Celia who supports him when he decides to help on a case, knowing that helping is just part of who he is (even when it puts a strain on their own relationship).
The last survivor, Marion Eichholz, died on 24 November 2014 at the age of 102. Susan Decker and Barbara Decker Wachholz, alongside Barbara's husband Ted, would found the Eastland Disaster Historical Society in 1998 in Bobbie's memory.
The whereabouts of Kenneth, Barbara and Barbie remain undetermined. In August 2025, diver Archer Mayo discovered human remains and various artifacts, including a camera cover with Ken Martin's name on it, inside a vehicle found submerged in Cascade Locks.
Inside, Sacagawea, just sixteen years old, was giving birth to her first child. The baby's father, Toussaint Charbonneau, had lived in a Hidatsa town for years. Sacagawea was one of his two wives.
There are currently five marked Confederate mass graves at Shiloh but there are believed to be more. Several years after the battle took place, the Union dead were moved to the Shiloh National Cemetery and given proper headstones while the Confederate bodies remained in trenches.
Ancestry, a significant amount of Haitians can trace our roots back to Nigeria to ethnic groups like the Yoruba and that's because during the Transatlantic slave trade, many of the Africans that were captured enslaved in brought to Sandomang which is now Haiti came from the region we now call Nigeria they also came ...
The western portion of the island of Hispaniola, where Haiti is situated, was inhabited by the Taíno and Arawakan people, who called their island Ayiti. The island was promptly claimed for the Spanish Crown, where it was named La Isla Española ("the Spanish Island"), later Latinized to Hispaniola.
Historically, then, “Creole” was not a racial signifier, but rather a pan-racial, place-based ethnicity, with the unifying commonality being local nativity.
