Friday Finds – The Cook County Poor Farm – Jeanne Meeks ~ Fiction Author

Louis Rock Rochon, my great-grandfather, was a rolling stone.(Pun intended.) He was born in 1848 in Quebec. When he was 17, his father died; then Louis immigrated to Illinois in 1867. He was still single and living in as a boarder in Chicago in 1880, but moved back to Canada the next year to live with siblings. The Canadian 1881 census lists his occupation as “Voyager” which, at the time, meant a worker on the river, probably for a lumber company.

Rock got married in Montreal at age 38, moved to Chicago. He and Marie Louise had nine children, three of whom died as toddlers. He worked as a street cleaner for the city of Chicago and abandoned his family in 1903 to live down the street with another woman. Seven years later the 1910 census shows he lived on the Cook County poor farm where he worked for wages as a laborer in the lumber yard. He died there in 1927 at age 82.

The Cook County Institution or Oak Forest Infirmary was built in 1910-11 to ease the overcrowding at the infamous Dunning Institute. The new site’s hundreds of acres were meant to house the indigent, elderly, and chronically ill TB patients. The complex had dormitories, hospital buildings, farm buildings, a school for young TB patients, and its own infrastructure. At its peak it had 4,000 residents.

When I was a kid, St. Damian parish in Oak Forest had just begun and had no church, so Mass was held at the infirmary. My mother never knew her grandfather had been a resident there for many years. Our Girl Scout troop went to sing Christmas carols for the elderly residents several times. I remember the awful smell.

The old hospital discontinued its inpatient services back in 2011. As of now, most of the remaining buildings are vacant.

The county is now leading a demolition program of many of the unused buildings.
Some buildings have been identified as potentially historic or of reuse value, and would be preserved.
The Old Growth Oak Savanna at the northwest corner of the campus is to be protected.
The burial sites in the Pauper’s Cemetery (including those with remains from the 1918 flu pandemic and indigent burials) will be preserved.
In 1958 an upper Mississippi late-prehistoric Native American village was unearthed on the site, including items to indicate early European contact, These were possibly ancestors to Miami, Potawatomi or Illini tribes. This archeological site will be protected.

It’s amazing what you can find in your own backyard.

Follow my website as I trace my Rochon family roots for my historical fiction novel.

Jeanne,
I enjoyed your history story. Great writing. Over the years I accumulated the history of the shores of Lake Owen and later periodically led hike on the North Country Trail that adjoins Lake Owen for over a mile. That section was the site of the largest Indian village in northern Wisconsin. Here are excerpts from my handout:

   "A 1978 archeological survey of Wisconsin’s three most northern counties discovered over 50 sites where ancient Indian artifacts were found, 23 of these sites were on the north shore of Lake Owen from the present boat landing around to near the Lake Owen campgrounds. The oldest artifacts in the Lake Owen area date to 2830 B.C.  From that time to about 120 A.D., American Indians were seasonal visitors to Lake Owen arriving in the Spring, where they hunted beaver and birds, gathered buds and root plants, and fished with nets, copper hooks and spearing spawning white fish and smallmouth bass from dugout canoes.  When they departed in the Summer for areas on the shore of Lake Superior, they submerged their dugout canoes with rocks to be retrieved in the next Spring. From 120 A.D. to 610 A.D. the Indians camp on Lake Owen became on a more permeant, year round village where they used birch bark canoes, and hunting with bow and arrow deer, bear, less frequently, moose, elk, caribou and mountain lion.  Lake Owen Indians ate Goosefoot (common name Wild Spinach), wild rice, hazel nuts, acorns, Ramps, cattails, trapped beaver, otter, ducks and lots of fish.  After 610 A.D. American Indians off and on camped on the shores of Lake Owen while hunting and fishing. From 120 A.D. to 610 A.D. the Indian camp on Lake Owen became on a more permeant village hunting of moose, elk, caribou and mountain lion with bows and arrows.

Arrival of the Ojibwa Indians
Warfare with the Iroquois Indians and displacement by European settlers in the 18th Century drove out the Algonquian up the Saint Lawrence seaway to eventually Lake Superior, bringing with them the knowledge of building lightweight birch bark canoes. Those Algonquian Indians settling around Lake Superior called themselves Ojibwa. The Ojibwa living in the Northwoods of Wisconsin main diet were wild rice, bear, deer, elk, moose, and maple syrup. Long and narrow Lake Owen became the preferred waterway and trading route by canoe from the Lake Superior region, up the Bad River to the White River to Lake Owen, down the turtle portage to the Namekagon River, then to Saint Croix River, the Mississippi River and points south.

  When the first White people started settling the north woods of Wisconsin, the Ojibwa inhabited the Wisconsin’s north woods in widely spaces settlements centered around Chequamegon Bay and the Apostle Islands, living in birch bark wigwams.   The Dakota Indians a/k/a Sioux also lived in in the Northwoods to the southwest of the bulk of the Chippewa.  In 1841 the Sioux battled the Ojibwa at Stillwater, Minnesota resulting in greater losses to the Sioux.  In the Fall of 1842 a large contingency of Sioux warriors were camped on the west side of the Brule River near the current site of Brule, Wisconsin, putting them in a position to defeat the Ojibwa in detail in their widely scattered villages.  Ojibwa Chief Buffalo had only enough time to collect several hundred warriors along with his “adopted son”, Benjamin Armstrong (born 1820).  In 1892, Armstrong documented the battle as follows. The Ojibwa arrived opposite of the Sioux camp at sunset, September 30, 1842.

  Before sunrise the next morning, Ojibwa Chief Buffalo divided his warriors into thirds.  The first third went up river, crossed over, and such up as close as they could the Sioux encampment without being detected.  The second third went down river, cross over and likewise snuck up as close as they could without be detected.  The final third were centered opposite of the Sioux encampment and hid close to the Brule River hidden behind the 2 to 3 foot embankment.  According to the Chief’s plan, at dawn, a handful of decoy Ojibwa warriors crossed the river which was 3 feet deep at that point, and starting walking into the Sioux camp.   The decoy Ojibwa warriors made sure they were detected, feigned fear, and retreating east back across the Brule River climbing two handed up the 2 to 3 foot embankment.  The bulk of the Sioux warriors grabbed their knives and clubs and charged in a frenzy as a group after the small decoy Ojibwa.  Upon reaching the embankment, the Sioux warriors used their hands to climb up the bank in close pursuit.  As planned, the three groups Ojibwa warriors converged simultaneously on the Sioux with devastating results.  With the Ojibwa on the high ground, the Sioux in waist deep water, the Ojibwa easily prevailed against the larger group of Sioux resulting in a body count of 101 Sioux dead to 13 Chippewa dead. The Sioux retreated from the area and became primarily plains Indians, defeating Custer in 1876 at the Battle of Little Big Horn.  Coincidently Custer’s commanding officer General Sturgis’ son became one of the earliest homeowners on Lake Owen.

Lumber Barons
The lumber barons drove railroads into the Lake Owen area starting in the 1880’s. By 1893 Wisconsin became the world leader in lumber production with more than 3.5 billion yearly board feet. By the time of the Great Depression, the entire northern Wisconsin forest was logged flat save less than a dozen small patches of a few acres of virgin forest, two of which are on the hike. These two patches of virgin Hemlock pines were not logged because the saw mill would have to close to retool their saw blades for Hemlock and they could make more money by sawing the surrounding full grown red and white pine. In 1935, the National Forest took over ownership of the land around Lake Owen.

Lake Owen Hardwoods State Natural Area:
Designated a State Natural Area in 2007 because of its current undisturbed wild character, the entire route of the North Country Trail goes through this area from just north of the picnic grounds to five miles east towards Porcupine Lake. This area has two high quality stands of old-growth virgin hemlock trees in a large tract of unfragmented, pine and hardwood forest near the Lake Owen shore. Hemlock is reproducing under the fire-origin paper birch. The hardwoods are dominated by sugar maple and red oak with scattered white pine and smaller amounts of paper birch, big-toothed aspen, and red maple. Several small seepage lakes and ponds and are associated with communities of black ash swamp, muskeg/open bog, emergent and floating leaved aquatics, and red maple-cinnamon fern swamp with iris swales. Mature, rich sugar maple-basswood forest is scattered throughout. Also present is a small inclusion of bedrock controlled landscape (Gogebic-Penokee Range) with shaded wet and dry cliffs that support a remnant red pine community and two rare plant species. Common ground-layer species include sweet cicely, big-leaved aster, Pennsylvania sedge, Canada mayflower, sessile-leaved bellwort, downy Solomon’s-seal, and shining club-moss.

  Wolf, moose, bobcat and cougar after an absence from northern Wisconsin for more than 50 years have returned on their own. In 1995 Elk were reintroduced in the Clam Lake area less than 20 miles to the southeast of Lake Owen with over 400 elk now living in Wisconsin."

Jeanne,
Keep up your emails and your work. I enjoy them.

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