On the Trail of Eliza Steele Preview

Just how did Midewin determine Eliza’s route and named locations? History detectives comprised of Forest Service staff and Midewin volunteers uncovered her exact route. They pieced together clues from her 1841 book, A Summer Journey in the West. Additionally, they used two detailed sets of maps. The first from 15 years before Eliza’s trip and the second from 11 years after. Finally, written accounts from other folks that lived around this period were used. These accounts helped determine the location of various landmarks. These sources helped to reconstruct Eliza’s route from Chicago to Peru, Illinois on July 6th and 7th, 1840. Eliza didn’t have the luxury of an accurate 1840 map conveniently marked with her route. She wrote of prairies and “oak openings” which takes a lot of detective work to reveal.

Both, the 1820’s and 1851 maps, use the Public Land Survey System. This is a grid of one square mile “sections” numbered 1 to 36, within 36 square mile “Townships.” This system is still used today in property deeds. With some computer and map magic, these old maps were incorporated into the “Geographical Information System” you may know as GIS. This software allowed historic maps to be aligned with modern maps. It showed quite accurately where the edges of timber, prairie, and were in the 1820s, and in 1851… and where those roads and landmarks would have been on the land today! It appeared that if the edges of timber as recorded in 1822 were relatively close to the edges of timber in 1851, they would probably also match what Eliza experienced in 1840.

Below is an example of the deductive reasoning used by Midewin’s history detectives to map out Eliza's path. Eliza provided us many data points to uncover her exact route. We know they boarded the stagecoach at 9 pm and then picked up the mail at the post office. They would have crossed the south branch of the Chicago River by using the Dearborn St Bridge. This was the closest bridge to Madison Street, which had no bridge in 1840. Then, they cut south to pick up Madison Street, the road that led west out of town.

We know that the swampy trail, “Barry Point Road,” intersected Madison on the west side of modern California Ave. From there they would have been following whatever previous tracks to the southwest were available to the driver in the dark. From leaving Madison onto Barry Point Road it was about 4.5 to 5 miles to the actual “Barry Point,” where the road regained a dry and wooded “sand ridge” and then went on to the crossing of the Des Plaines River at Lawton’s Tavern in modern day Riverside, just north of Ogden and Joliet Street.

When the driver lost the trace of the road Eliza noted: “The hour, seen by the light of the coach lamp, proved to be twelve.” From this we can infer that the coach was traveling at roughly two miles per hour. This is consistent with the speed of the coach as recorded in J.S. Buckingham’s narrative of his nighttime trip over the same route just a month before Eliza’s. One assumes the stagecoach picked up to its normal speed of 5 to 7 mph (probably closer to 5 mph at best, since they were traveling in the dark) once they gained the road atop the sand ridge.

We know, it would have been well after midnight when they stopped to change horses at Lawton’s Tavern on the Des Plaines River. For the rest of the night, the coach would travel along what is now Joliet Road and I-55, the Stevenson Expressway. It should have been about sunrise. The time was 5:22 am our time, but in Eliza's pre-Daylight Savings Time Era it was 4:22 am. It was July 7th when they emerged from the last timber stand between Oldfield Rd. and modern Lemont Road along I-55.

But Eliza could not have seen “the sun arising from the earth where it touched the horizon was ‘kissing with golden face the meadows green’” until they were somewhere a bit past the prairie ridge atop which Lemont Road now runs (i.e., she couldn’t have been looking east to see the sun rising above the prairie until that point…looking east any earlier she would have seen the sun kissing the canopy of timber!)

Eliza R. Stansbury was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1798. She was one of four daughters of Daniel and Eliza Stansbury of the prominent Stansbury family. On 9 Nov., 1838, at age 40, she married immigrant British merchant, Joseph Steele. In June and July 1840, the Steeles made their visit to the American Frontier, Chicago. On a spontaneous change to their planned itinerary, on to the Mississippi River. In 1840, her first book, Heroines of Sacred History was entered into copyright. The preface, dated October, 1840, suggests she delivered it to the publisher after her return from the West. A Summer Journey In the West was published in 1841. In 1845 they moved into their new home in the fashionable Clinton Hill neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. The house still stands and since 1968 has been a New York Historic Landmark for its architectural value.

On Sunday, June 14, 1840, the Steeles departed New York and travelled up the Hudson by boat and then by stagecoach to Buffalo. Here they boarded the steamer

Constellation on June 30. They arrived in Chicago on Monday, July 6.

--Eliza and Joseph Steele purchased tickets on the the Frink, Walker & Co. stagecoach line.

--Frink, Walker & Co’s U.S. Mail contract was worth over $78,000 a year at the time; just over $2,000,000 when adjusted for inflation. They eventually won mail contracts in multiple Midwestern states worth many millions of inflation adjusted dollars.

--The stage headed west out of Chicago on Madison Street.

And at midnight..."the hour, seen by the light of the coach lamp, proved to be twelve, and each settled in his corner for another doze. A sudden halt of the stage awakened us. The coachman took down a lamp and began to search for something on the ground. 'Halo, driver, what have you lost?' asked the youth. 'Only my road sir,' he replied. 'Lost your road!' exclaimed the youth in dismay; 'Lost in these lonely moors among wolverines and jack-o'lanterns! Here's a pretty fix!' 'Driver you ought to keep the skin off your eyes in such a dark night, I guess,' said the other passenger. I only wondered he could ever keep his road, as there was no house or tree to mark his course."

Our first thought, based on what others had written, was that their stagecoach crossed the Des Plaines at the Summit Ford, stopped to change horses at the Summit stage station, then followed Archer Ave along the south side of the Des Plaines to Lockport.

The route Eliza Steele took from crossing the Des Plaines in Riverside at Ogden can still be taken… although it looks vastly different now.

Today you take:

--Joliet Ave. south from Ogden Ave. through Lyons

--Right (west) onto Joliet Rd

--Jogging around the quarry in Countryside

--Following Joliet Rd(Rt 66)

--Pass LaGrange Rd, Wolf Rd, & I-294

--Merge onto I-55/Stevenson South

"the first post house at which we stopped for breakfast was a rude log cabin. Our detention during the night had prevented our arriving at the usual breakfast hour, and it was supposed we had taken our meal elsewhere, and of course we were obliged to wait. 'Breakfast ! Breakfast !' was the cry of the driver and passengers, as we alighted. 'Aye, aye!' returned the landlord."

Mount Joliet

"A few miles from Joliet, we passed an object, to me of great interest--it was an Indian mound. This was a perfect gem--as regular, as smooth, and as green as if cut out of an emerald--being an oblong of fifty rods high, and seventy or eighty long. Although centuries have passed since it was formed, it is as perfect in shape, as if just moulded. A beautiful, solitary thing it is, telling of nations and events now lost in the mists of time."

After passing Mt. Joliet, Eliza describes another prairie, somewhere between Joliet and the Au Sable…. a few miles north of Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie.

"A line of trees proclaimed a river near, and we soon dashed through the Aux Sable, the horses dancing with joy, as the clear cool waters curled about their feet. The sight of a house on the opposite bank, seemed quite a novelty, as we had not seen one since leaving Joliet, at nine o'clock, and it was now one. The house was of boards painted white, and a hanging sign proclaimed it one of entertainment. Here we dined and changed horses. The meats were very good, the pies and custards tolerable, but the vegetables were the finest we had ever tasted. Peas, bean, potatoes were all very excellent. Every thing we saw was from the landlords farm, which extended over the prairie some distance from his house. He and his men, came in from the corn fields when the conch, sounded for dinner, and without their coats--their shirt sleeves rolled up, they placed themselves beside us-- one does not dress for dinner on the prairies."

Eliza’s journey over July 6th & 7th in 1840 was a whirlwind trip through the wilds of the west. She was enamored by the wildness and beauty of Illinois. The prairie especially stole her heart. She tried to capture and paint with words the wonder of the prairie. In her narrative, Eliza has a brief list of plants she encountered on her journey. The majority, of this list, consists of common names with a few scientific names peppered in as well. Botanical records in Illinois are scant for the time-period that Eliza traveled. So, it’s hard to say with any certainty if her observations were accurate. Climate change has caused the blooming times of some species of plants to shift since Eliza’s observations. This made her list of plants even more difficult to pin down.

Her descriptions, of prairie as a whole, paint a majestic and inspiring view. We must remember that on most of the journey through the prairie, Eliza and her husband were traveling in a stagecoach at a speed of 5-7 miles per hour and a height of about 7 ft. off the ground. We should also keep in mind; she had no particular botanical knowledge or training of which we know. It is possible she was getting plant information from books, picking up names from locals, and using her husbands knowledge of plant species from Britain.

Let’s see a few examples of plants Eliza named in her narrative. She mentions a few cultivated species common in gardens of the era. Maybe these were escapees from gardens of farmer’s wives --- bouncing bet and sweet William. Her list contains some peculiar plants based on her early July travel. She records bluebells, a spring ephemeral typically found in woodlands but not prairie. Bluebells, Mertensia virginica, would be dormant by July. She may have used the common name bluebell for another species with a bell-shaped flower. This may have been the flower know as harebells, Campanula rotundifolia or marsh bellflower, Campanula aparinoides. Both would likely have been in bloom in July.

Eliza mentions fringed gentian, Gentianopsis crinita, which is a fall blooming species. She doesn’t say all the flowers she listed were blooming but without botanical training, it is unlikely she was recognizing plants not in bloom from her stagecoach window. She lists scarlet lobelia which is very likely Lobelia cardinalis, cardinal flower. This beauty typically blooms later in July than when Eliza visited but is still a possibility. The lovely pink moccasin flower or pink lady’s slipper is a Cypripedium orchid and it made her list as well. The compendium, Flora of the Chicago Region, lists 3,200 species know to historically grow in 22 counties of the Chicago region. This Flora anthology shows no occurrences for Cypripedium acaule, pink lady’s slipper, in Will County but it does list this species for Cook County, where Eliza spent part of her journey. It is possible Eliza saw showy lady’s slipper, Cypripedium reginae. There is a record of a population at a wooded seep in the Des Plaines river valley near Lemont. Eliza passed near this area in her travels.

Another plant named in Eliza’s list is orchis. She may have been referring to the eastern prairie fringed orchid, Platanthera leucophaea. She also describes what she calls teazle in enough detail to ID it without much doubt. She says, ‘tall stem and purple head’ and the ‘fringe of long pink petals’. Sounds like pale purple coneflower, Echinacea pallida. So, you see why botanists use a latin name instead of a common name to describe flowers. Different flowers may have the same common name because common names often vary by geographic region. Thus, one plant may have several different common names but it has only one latin name.

From her narrative, Eliza appears to be a very well-educated women for her time. In several passages, she sports not only her knowledge of geology but her ability to use her knowledge to interpret her surroundings. Eliza loved the timbered areas and oak groves, but she was truly enamored with the wide, never-ending expanse of flowers & grasses of the prairie. Eliza saw the wild beauty we all see when we visit a prairie. Please come walk through Midewin’s prairie and experience some of what Eliza shared with us through her words.

Enlarge map below to follow red car images along Eliza's route on today's roads.