John Kinzie was born on December 03, 1763 at Quebec, Canada. His father, John McKenzie, had come thither as a surgeon with the British army and had there married Anne, the widow of William Haliburton, an army chaplain. When McKenzie died soon after their son was born, Anne McKenzie took as her third husband William Forsyth, who removed to Detroit and there opened the first tavern.
Young John, who changed his name to Kinzie, left home early and learned the trade of silversmith, from which he received the Indian name, "Shaw-nee-aw-kee, " the Silver Man.
When about eighteen, Kinzie began trading with Indians on the Maumee River, at Fort Wayne, then on the site of Defiance, Ohio. In 1804 he moved with his family to the mouth of the Chicago River, a site Kinzie had visited and traded on years earlier, where in 1803 Fort Dearborn had been built. Here business prospered. In 1812 Kinzie had a quarrel with Jean Lalime, a French trader, whom he killed, supposedly in self-defense.
In the massacre of Fort Dearborn troops in August of that year, Kinzie and his family were saved by friendly Indians. They retreated first to St. Joseph and then to Detroit, where Kinzie, suspected of American sympathies, was arrested by the British and imprisoned. He never recovered from the effects of the war either in his property or person. In 1816 he returned to Chicago and lived there until his death. In 1821 he aided the commissioners who came to make an Indian treaty, and in 1825 was commissioned justice of the peace.
Kinzie was known as one of the first European settlers of Chicago and for killing Jean La Lime in 1812. It was the first documented murder in the area of Chicago. He was also remembered for his trading business in the Northwest Territory of the United States and his help in establishing relations with Indians. A subdivision and a street in Chicago bear his name.
Kinzie was a kindly, pleasant man, devoted to his family, shrewd at trade, and always popular with his Indian customers.
Kinzie lived for some time with Margaret McKenzie, an Indian captive, whose legal marriage to him has been often asserted and as often denied. In 1795 she found her own family and went home to Virginia. In 1798 he married Eleanor Lytle McKillip, whose first husband Daniel McKillip, an officer in the British militia, had fallen at Wayne's battle of 1794. They had four children.
