Iowa County WI Archives History - Books .....Excerpt From The Early History Of Chicago 1833
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Nancy Poquette npoq@hotmail.com December 20, 2006, 12:01 pm

Book Title: Early History Of Chicago, 188?

From the Early History of Chicago, 188?, page 139:

“Postal Affairs-The post office in 1833, John C. Hogan, Postmaster, was kept in 
a small log building near the corner of Lake and South Water Streets. At that 
time there was but one eastern mail per week, to and from Niles, Michigan, 
which was carried on horseback. The building was twenty by forty-five feet in 
size, was partitioned off so as to serve as a post office on one side and as 
the store of Brewster, Hogan and Co, on the other. John Bates, Jr., still 
living in Chicago, was the assistant postmaster, and assorted the mails, 
delivered the letters, and was the executive factotum of the place. John L. 
Wilson also became an assistant in the summer of 1834. John Bates, Deputy 
Postmaster at that time, in an interview October 31, 1883, said:

“‘The eastern mail was carried once a week, on horseback, by a little, short, 
stocky Frenchman, whom we called LOUIS. In 1834 or 1835, the pony mail express 
of Louis was abolished and John S. Trowbridge took the contract to haul the 
mail between Niles and Michigan in a wagon. Trowbridge afterward ‘went west’ 
and at one time was mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas. The receipts of the post 
office in 1833 were from $15 to $20 per quarter.”

[Presumably he was asked a question about the little Frenchman here.] “I never 
knew him by any other name. The mail came once a week; speculation set in and 
the village began to grow. During the last of it, the mail used to weigh thirty 
to forty pounds and was so big that Louis had to walk, and the bags on the 
horse’s back spread out like wings, making the pony look like some kind of a 
queer bird.”

Page 142: “In 1833 there were perhaps, 200 bona fide inhabitants; in the spring 
and early summer of 1834 it had become a village of 800, and during the fall 
its population was estimated at from 1,600 to 2,000.”

Additional Comments:
Louis's son George Washington Poquette frequently told my father [George's 
grandson] that LOUIS POQUETTE frequently traveled to and from Fort Dearborn, 
but with no additional details that my father could recall. Fort Dearborn was 
the early name for the city of Chicago, when it was lightly populated. I cannot 
say for sure, and will need to contact the US Postal Service archives, but the 
little man named Louis could have been LOUIS POQUETTE after he left the service 
of the Green Bay Outfit of the American Fur Company.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/wi/iowa/history/1833/earlyhis/excerptf18gms.txt

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