Today's recession finds comparison not with the Great Depression of the 1930s, but with the many battles with President Andrew Jackson in the 1830s. A small column like this does not permit our going into those battles in any depth, but we can tick off a few happenings of historical importance.
First, let it be said that the country was on the move. Just as we are now moving out of the Industrial Age and into the Information Age, the United States was shedding its old skin and taking on new.
What is especially interesting to us, at this moment, is the various wars conducted by Jackson eventually boiled down to one with banker Nicholas Biddle.
The Baillys of the Calumet Region married into the Biddle family. Joseph Bailly was an aristocrat from old Canada. He was born in 1774 at Quebec.
Although he was born of a prominent French family, he was adventuresome and wanted nothing so much as to explore the great western part of Canada. He succeeded to the extent that he traveled west as he engaged in the fur trade and finally made a mark at what was then called Michilimackinac.
Well educated, Joseph was a big, loud man, truly good natured and fond of entertaining friends. As a fur trader, he worked his way down to the Muskegon, Kalamazoo and St. Joseph Rivers, where he was associated with William Burnett, John Kinzie and that most famous of all Indians for regionites, Alexander Robinson.
Shortly after the turn of the century, Bailly reached all the way to the Kankakee River with his trading business. Following the War of 1812, Bailly, as well as John Kinzie, was still making a good living despite the fact that John Jacob Astor and his American Fur Company had taken control of much of the Great Lakes. Ultimately, Bailly settled on the Little Calumet River south of Chesterton, which he thought was still Michigan, not Indiana.
Like most French traders of that era, Joseph Bailly married Indian women. The first was the daughter of an Indian chief and their union produced six children: Alexis, Joseph, Michael, Philip, Francis, and Sophia. With the exception of Francis, who became a medicine man, Joseph's children were first educated at Montreal.
Most notably, Alexis worked for the Northwest Fur Company and, after the War of 1812, worked for the American Fur Company. He was stationed at Prairie du Chien and later became the company's agent for the Minnesota Territory.
While at Mendota, Alexis married a daughter of John Baptiste Faribault, a big name in the Indian trade. During negotiations that led to the sale of Indian lands in Iowa and Minnesota, Alexis was elected to Minnesota's first General Assembly (1858), and was made Colonel in the state's militia.
All the rest of Joseph Bailly's children married well, including one who married a Biddle. If you would really like to get an idea of how our present condition resembles the 1830s, you'll find plenty to keep you busy at your local public library.
Opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
