![]() ![]() A site was selected on the Southwest corner of Clark and Lake Streets, which at the time was nothing but prairie bog, quite a distance from the first sprouts of the city huddled around the Fort. As the Reverend described it later, "I gathered the first church ever formed in Chicago since 'the morning stars first sang together.'"Īgain, the Reverend's talents grew the little group to 67 members within a year, and demand began to be made for a formal church edifice. Porter held his first services almost immediately upon arrival, ministering to 26 members in the carpenter shop at Fort Dearborn. He wrote in his journal that his first sight upon alighting in Illinois was a group of Indians playing cards in front of a primitive saloon, with a group of soldiers looking on. When he arrived in Chicago, he was utterly dismayed at the unchristian standards of the city. Brady soldiers save one lone couple, who somehow managed to resist. ![]() Porter was apparently an exceptional minister, and had converted all of the Ft. Porter took the opportunity to travel with the regiment. Brady was transferred to Fort Dearborn in May, 1833, to replace those lost and to relieve others. After the Black Hawk War of 1832 in Chicago, in which 72 soldiers were killed, a regiment from Ft. Marie, ministering to the soldiers on the wild frontier. Porter was born in Massachusetts in 1804, and had graduated Williams College in that state at age 21 before matriculating at Andover Theological Seminary. Religion was not a particularly important part of the city's life up to that time, although one tireless believer, Philo Carpenter, had begun a Methodist Sunday School with 15 pupils earlier that year. It was after one such winter in May, 1833 that the Revered Jeremiah Porter arrived in town. To make those games of chance more interesting, gambling became a common occupation of frontier Chicagoans, especially during the long, cold winters. Cards and dice games were also popular, and the city's proximity to the Mississippi River brought a wide range of card sharks and confidence men through on a regular basis. Prostitution was an early growth industry on Wells Street, booze flowed freely, and horseracing was a perennial sport. As in most frontier towns, the male-to-female ratio was far from one, and men with extra time on their hands and no female companionship will seek excitement in countless ways. In 1833, Chicago's population numbered around 300, the majority of whom were soldiers stationed at Fort Dearborn, French trappers, and "civilized" Potowotomie Indians. The city's first battle between religion and vice was centered here, on the Southwest corner of Clark and Lake, at the First Presbyterian Church. Because Chicago has always the country's first city in crime, it has also witnessed countless righteous uprisings against the underworld. ![]()
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