Troops With Cholera

 

Source

The first steamboats to visit Chicago, were those conveying the troops under command of General Winfield Scott in 1832 (cholera year) whose mission was to put an end to the Black Hawk war. Chicago before this did not attract scarcely any attention, being only an outlaying military post, on the very borders of civilization. The troops of General Scott on reaching Detroit, were attacked with the cholera, they suffered severely here, as also on the route to Chicago, and after their arrival at the latter post. The campaign of Gen. Scott is a matter of history. (Source)

Lincoln In Blackhawk War

Narrative in Record Of The Services Of Illinois Soldiers....

Lincoln In Iles' Company

Source - A. Lincoln -Last Entry Of Excerpt

History At Rock Island

Davenport Past And Present indicated that George Davenport was an Indian Agent with Farnum & Farrar.  He was born in England and that helped with the Native Americans. Davenport arrived at Fort Armstrong (at Rock Island, Illinois) as a contractor for the military troops in 1816.  His wife was one of the first white women to settle there.

Davenport House (Rock Island, Illinois)

When the Black Hawk War was imminent, U.S. Army General Gaines arrived at Fort Armstrong for a council with several chiefs:

Source

Note: Historical events converged at Rock Island, Illinois. Army doctor John Emerson, who owned Dred Scott, the named party in the infamous U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott Case [a Civil War precursor], had property near the Davenport house. [Emerson owned Scott when they moved from slave state Missouri to Illinois (where slavery was illegal)]

Question Posed In The Dred Scott Case

A Prairie On Fire

Source: Page 163  Chapter On Blackhawk's War

First Frame House In Chicago?

From the story of John and Sarah (Hesser) Coleman found in their son-in-law's (Sadastan Jones) biography:

John Coleman [Jacob, Valentine, Valentine] came to Indiana [John and Sarah were married in LaPorte County, Indiana, in 1834] at a very early day. He was a carpenter by trade and built the first frame house in the city of Chicago. He also carried the mail from Laporte, Indiana, to Chicago on horseback and it will thus be seen that he took a prominent part in the very earliest development of what was then known as the far west. He participated in the Black Hawk war and subsequently removed to Nebraska where he passed away in 1891, at the venerable age of eighty-three years, while his wife's death occurred the following year. [Source]  

See more about the family from the biography of Jacob Hesser Coleman, son of John and Sarah (Hesser) Coleman.

The family in Illinois in 1860:

1860 IL Greene Co.

Coleman, John, 57, b. PA, farmer

", Sarah, 41, b. OH

", Harriet, 23, b. IL

", Jacob, 19, b.IL

", Mary, 16, b. IL

", Lydia, 13, b. IL

", Alexander, 10, b. IL

", Sarah A., 7, b. IL

", Ellen J., 4, b. IL

", Rachael, 3/12, b. IL

Wells, Hanson, 73, father-in-law, b. VA

A transcribed version of the Coleman Family Bible, owned by Sarah Hesser Coleman, can be found here.