The year 1832 was tumultuous for Capt. Ebenezer Stark. The worldwide Cholera epidemic had killed millions in China and Europe and found its way across the oceans killing thousands more in New York and New Orleans. Cholera stole across the Great Lakes on ships and ravaged the Western Reserve. An early Cleveland settler’s book placed Captain Stark at the bedside of the stricken Job Doan, mayor of Cleveland. Doan, Stark’s friend, had officiated at Stark’s wedding.
Meanwhile that year, Capt. Stark continued his busy sailing assignments. Landings along the shores of Illinois and Wisconsin were particularly dangerous because of the Black Hawk War raging at that time. In 1832 Chief Black Hawk had organized the Sauk and Fox Indians against the white settlers in those states to reclaim Sauk territory they had lost in an earlier treaty.
Abraham Lincoln, just 23-years-old in 1832, signed up for a three-month enlistment in the Black Hawk War. When mustered out after his third month, he found his horse had been stolen and had to walk and canoe 200 miles back to his home in New Salem, Illinois.
Chief Black Hawk was captured after the war and paraded through the streets of several eastern cities as a curiosity. A newspaper reporter wrote the history of Black Hawk’s life, and being the first Native American biography, became a several-edition bestseller.
Black Hawk died at age 70 in 1838. In Indian tradition, he was not interred, but placed above ground in a sitting position with his cane clutched in his hands.
So how close did Capt. Ebenezer, Honest Abe, and Chief Black Hawk come to each other during 1832? Who knows – but a more creative writer of historical fiction might have made a good chapter out of it.
Hmmm, let’s see ….
“Abe is paddling his canoe along the Milwaukee lakefront when spotted by Chief Black Hawk. Could he escape to the anchored steamship fifty yards away? ….. Captain Stark to the rescue and in an undocumented account, saves the life of this nation’s most revered future President”