Josette Beaubien, Survivor of Fort Dearborn
Near Chicago Lake Michigan, Illinois
Buried near this site is Josette Beaubien, a woman of Chicago's earliest years, the time of the Fort Dearborn Massacre of eighteen twelve. When American soldiers evacuated the small fort at the mouth of the Chicago River, they were attacked by Potawatomi warriors, and dozens were killed. Josette's family lived in the Chicago area in those years, though accounts differ on where she was that day.
Her life straddled two worlds: her brother was Claude LaFramboise, a Potawatomi chief, and her husband was Jean Baptiste Beaubien, one of Chicago's earliest and most prominent settlers. Through both bloodlines she was woven into the city's founding years. She lived until eighteen forty-five, long enough to see the rough frontier outpost of her childhood transform into a booming young city of tens of thousands.
Her grave here in what was once a rural cemetery is a quiet marker of Chicago's most violent and tangled beginnings.
