Description

This is an autonarrated audiobook edition of this book

When Juliette Kinzie first visited Chicago in 1831 it was anything but a city An outpost in the shadow of Fort Dearborn it had no streets no sidewalks no schools no riverspanning bridges And with two hundred disconnected residents it lacked any sense of community In the decades that followed not only did Juliette witness the citys transition from Indian country to industrial center but she was instrumental in its development

Juliette is one of Chicagos forgotten founders Early Chicago is often presented as a mans city but women like Juliette worked to create an urban and urbane world often within their own parlors With The World of Juliette Kinzie we finally get to experience the rise of Chicago from the view of one of its most important founding mothers

Ann Durkin Keating one of the foremost experts on nineteenthcentury Chicago offers a moving portrait of a trailblazing and complicated woman Keating takes us to the corner of Cass and Michigan now Wabash and Hubbard Juliettes home base Through Juliettes eyes our understanding of early Chicago expands from a city of boosters and speculators to include the world that women created in and between households We see the development of Chicago society first inspired by cities in the East and later coming into its own midwestern ways We also see the city become a community as it developed its intertwined religious social educational and cultural institutions Keating draws on a wealth of sources including hundreds of Juliettes personal letters allowing Juliette to tell much of her story in her own words

Juliettes death in 1870 just a year before the infamous fire seemed almost prescient She left her beloved Chicago right before the physical city as she knew it vanished in flames But now her history lives on The World of Juliette Kinzie offers a new perspective on Chicagos past and is a fitting tribute to one of the first women historians in the United States