This Newsletter is published by

the Hyde Park Historical Society, a

not-for-profit organization founded

in 1975 to record, preserve, and

promote public interest in the history

of Hyde Park. Its headquarters,

located in an 1893 restored cable car

station at 5529 S. Lake Park Avenue,

houses local exhibits. It is open to

the public on Saturdays and Sundays

from 2 until 4pm.

Web site: hydeparkhistory.org

Telephone: HY3-1893

President: Ruth Knack

Vice-President: Janice A. Knox

Secretary: Gary Ossewaarde

Treasurer: Jay Wilcoxen

Editor: Frances S. Vandervoort

Membership Coordinator:

Claude Weil

Designer: Nickie Sage

VoL. 36 N0. 3 SuMMEr 2014Published by the Hyde Park Historical Society

Hyde Park History

Joel Greenberg, naturalist and writer, has played a key role in a nationwide project

to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the extinction of passenger pigeons. Passenger pigeons were part of the Chicago landscape until the last past of the 19th century. They were also raised and studied by Professor Charles O. Whitman, who founded the

Department of Zoology at the University of Chicago. This article is part of a longer report Joel Greenberg includes in his newly published book, A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction (Bloomsbury 2014).

Greenberg describes the last big pigeon flight he’d heard about as appearing in the spring of 1871 over

the South Shore Country Club, then a marshy area in the Village of Hyde Park just southeast of Chicago before the Village was annexed by the city. A hunting party arriving there that spring learned that the ducks were largely absent but the jacksnipe were plentiful. In less than an hour they had bagged “as many birds as the right kind of hunters care to kill.” After a leisurely lunch of

Male and female pigeons

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Hyde Park Historical Society 5529 S. Lake Park Avenue Chicago, IL 60637

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Passenger Pigeons and Chicago

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Answer to Mystery Quiz:Daniel Burnham

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New MembersThe Society welcomes the following new members: Raymond Johnson and Mark Mandle.

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r roast snipe and ample liquids, the men headed

back. Henry Kleinman, the brother of celebrated shooter Abe whom we will meet more formally in the next chapter, was driving: “[H]e suddenly pulled the team up and ejaculated, ‘What’s that?’ [W]e saw what appeared to be a dark cloud moving rapidly towards us. ‘They’re wild pigeons going north,’ exclaimed Milligan. Drive fast and we’ll run right into them.” Well, it was not to be, as when the pigeons spied Lake Michigan they headed east and away from the hunters.

According to Henry Eenigenburg, who lived next to the Calumet marshes on Chicago’s southeast side, the fall of 1871 marked the end of the passenger pigeons as a common nesting species at the south end of Lake Michigan. The birds, he said, used to nest in the white pines that were still common in the Indiana Dunes. (It seems clear that these were not in the huge nestings that occurred elsewhere but in the smaller configurations that few observers seem to have described in much detail.) But virtually no rain fell that summer, so that by September the entire region flanking Lake Michigan was a tinderbox. On October 8 the flames erupted and burned for several days: Peshtigo, Wisconsin lost 1,152 people and four square miles of Chicago became ash and rubble. Eenigenburg claims millions of pigeons also perished, which is doubtful, but the habitat that attracted them did suffer. And perhaps worse than the impacts of the fire itself, little standing timber, particularly the highly coveted white pine, would survive the rebuilding of Chicago.

Chicago became a center for pigeon shoots because several large dealers had their headquarters there. Dexter Park, on the south side, was a popular venue. The Kennicott Club met there on August 1872 for a match that drew forty-four contestants vying for prizes. Each shot at twenty birds and after the first round three shooters had killed nineteen. A second round was called to settle the tie. Each man was to shoot ten pigeons. This eliminated but one, as two reached the identical scores of eight. These two then faced off and each was given ten more pigeons to show off his prowess. But again they each bagged the identical number- seven. Yet another round of ten was ordered and this time a clear winner emerged, as the score was eight to four. It was said to be the most exciting match at Dexter Park in years. Five years later, the same venue would host “a grand tournament” using 5,000 wild pigeons. A few hours to the southwest, the Illinois State Sportsman Association held its annual meet in Peoria in 1879 and had 14,000 pigeons on hand for the festivities.

One of the largest dealers in the country, who marketed both live and dead birds, was also in Chicago. Bond and Ellsworth on South Water Street

stocked barrels of dead pigeons on the first floor of their warehouse, which had walls adorned with elk antlers. A visitor was surprised that he saw no live birds, but upon being accompanied to the upper three floors, he saw where they all were. Each floor held 12 cages of 12 feet square. The cages were equipped with perches which allowed fuller utilization of the available space. Under ordinary circumstances, a total of 15,000 to 20,000 pigeons could be accommodated, but during emergencies additional birds could be squeezed in. Mortality among newly arrived birds amounted to 35 to 55 pigeons in every cage over the first two days.

To his great amazement Edward Clark discovered a male pigeon in April 1893 in Chicago’s expansive Lincoln Park. Clark was a newspaper writer. While working in Washington DC, he became close friends with Theodore Roosevelt. But now he was on the staff of the Chicago Tribune. Clark’s writings are striking in that they are among the earliest to reflect the sensibility of the modern birder. A graduate of West Point who rose to the rank of colonel, he was certainly adept in the use of firearms but nowhere does he express the desire to procure specimens, as is the case with almost all of his contemporary naturalists and conservationists. Indeed, he attacks those who would kill such a rare bird in the name of science. He penned a lovely memoir of his pigeon experience that was published in the paper the following year: “He was perched on the limb of a soft maple and was facing the rising sun. There were no trees between him and the lake to break from his breast the fullness of the glory of the rising sun. The sun made his every feather shine. Not a single feather was misplaced, and about the neck there was the brilliancy of gems.”

A man about 50 years old interrupted Clark’s reverie. He said he had heard of passenger pigeons but had never seen one before. And now that there was one so close, he regretted not having a gun to shoot it. How Clark responded when he heard a sentiment so discordant with his own is not shared. Pusillanimity is not an attribute usually associated with people of Clark’s background. In print, he characterized his companion of brief duration this way: “That man, during the first twenty-five years of his life, must have been afflicted with blindness . . . He had no soul above pigeon pie.” Clark had hoped to flush the bird so that it would fly to the north and out of the city. But, instead, to his dismay, the bird “winged his arrowy flight straight down the Lake Shore drive toward the heart of the city.” But even if the pigeon had flown in the direction Clark thought safest, it might not have mattered: just a few months later in September, somebody shot one out of a flock of three near the Des Plaines River, in Lake County, just to the north.

➤ 1 respecting the Bird—Stories from the Past

In January 1834, famed Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth, father of actor Edwin Booth and, more infamously, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth, contacted a friend asking for help in finding a graveyard for the interment of a friend. A few days later, he asked his friend if he would like to “see the remains.” To the friend’s surprise, Booth showed him a sheet upon which were spread the bodies of “about a bushel” of wild (passenger) pigeons. Booth then hired a hearse to carry the tiny bodies to the lot he had purchased in a nearby cemetery, where a solemn funeral was conducted.

Booth later wrote, “We trust our boasted humanity will hold the protection of these beautiful birds to be a most sacred trust—an attitude rarely taken in the day of its abundance.”

In another incident, which happened in August 1826, a traveler crossing Lake Superior in a group of large canoes reported that “… the lake (was) white with foam when a bird was seen coming across the lake, feeble in its efforts, directing its flight toward our canoes.” It had lit on the yard arm when one of the oarsman lifted his oar to strike and kill it. The traveler caught his arm, preventing the slaughter. The bird was taken down and given to him. “It was too feeble to fly and its heart was beating as if it would break,” wrote the traveler who gave him some water to drink and some broken pieces of cracker. “Nothing shall cause me to abandon it,” he wrote, and gave the bird the Chippewa name Me-me. The bird learned its name, came when called, and lived for several years in domestication.

Auk, XXVIII, 1911, Pp. 346-348.

Bert’s Words (Part 2)Late Society member Bert Benade collected aphorisms, quotations, and other items of particular interest to him. Here are six more.

A city is a garden for growing people.

Be yourself—everyone else is already taken. – Oscar Wilde

He is a theist who does not believe in himself. – Swami Vivekananda

Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans for the future.

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece. – John Ruskin

You can explain things to people, but you can’t understand it for them. – Bert Benade

Sunday, June 29, 2-4 PM Chicago Metro History Fair, program by local history winners. Augustana Lutheran Church Fellowship Hall, 5500 South Woodlawn Avenue.

Sunday, August 17, 2-4 PM Hyde Park-Kenwood Stories Program at Montgomery Place, 5550 South Shore Drive. The theme will be Parks of Hyde Park and Kenwood.

Sunday, October 19 (time to be determined) Program at the Hyde Park Art Center about local artists over the years.

At a date and location to be determined, Susan O’Connor Davis will speak at a Bert Benade memorial Fund-Raising benefit.

Special PBS (Ch. 11) television programs about park history in Chicago:

Thursday, June 19, 8 PM Jens Jensen, who designed Columbus and Garfield Parks.

Friday, June 20, at 9 PM Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America.

UPCOMING EVENTS

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rPigeons yesterday and Today

Miocene fossils records indicate that pigeons, members of the family Columbidae, have been around for some 20 million years. Versatile, adaptable, and excellent fliers, pigeons are found in every region of the Earth except Antarctica and the ice-clad north. Most of the 255 species of pigeons are native to tropical regions. Aside from transgressors from the tropics visiting the nation’s southern fringes, only two species of these birds, the mourning dove (Zenaida macroura), which ranges from coast to coast, and the band-tailed pigeon (Columba fasciata), native to western states, make their homes in any portion of the continental United States. All pigeons of both sexes produce crop milk to nourish their young (Cokinos, 2000; Skutch, 1991).

Pigeon fanciers collect and raise pigeons for pleasure, show, sport, or to sell. Homing pigeons carry messages safely and securely between lines of enemy combatants in tiny containers attached to a leg. Wild (feral) pigeons (Columba livia), whose incessant cooing, roosting and messy habits either fascinate or repel the public, were first brought to the United States by early settlers from across the Atlantic who sought to improve simple fare

by adding fat squabs to the table.Two species of pigeons symbolize all that can go

wrong with game management. The dodo, Raphus cucullatus, was a large, flightless relative of the common (feral) pigeon that lived exclusively on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. It weighed as much as 18 to 20 kilograms (40 pounds or more), and stood as much as one meter tall. It was fat, slow, tasty, and easily caught by Dutch seamen en route to the Netherlands East Indies. The first recorded sighting of a dodo was in 1598; the birds had totally disappeared by 1662.

It’s difficult to think of Passenger Pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius) except in the plural. Vast fly-bys of millions of birds could last for hours, even days. The accumulated weight of the birds splintered tree branches, which were then stripped bare of leaves and nuts by hungry birds seeking sustenance for their travels.

The dodo suffered the fate of many island species. With underdeveloped wings and the fearlessness of a bird that never had to escape from anything, it became prey to rats and deliberately introduced domestic animals such as cats and pigs. The

Passenger Pigeon’s extinction was caused by fragmentation of native broadleaf forests by early settlers seeking farmland, the development of land for cities and towns, and by human insensitivity and greed.

We shouldn’t leave the discussion of pigeons without mentioning “stool pigeons.” birds tied by their legs

to a stool or box. Professional “pigeoners” would fasten a passenger pigeon (or other bird) in place by loosely tying its legs to the top of a box or stool, which was then placed on a large net that could be drawn shut in an instant by pulling a special “net rope.” Grain and other food items then were scattered about on the net. The pigeoner would startle the stool pigeon into flying as far as the tethering cord would allow, attracting birds flying overhead, who would then alight on the net and in the wink of an eye, be caught by the pigeoner. The average catch was fifty to sixty birds, but catches of 150 birds or more were not unusual. Slaughtered birds were packed in barrels of 300 or more and shipped to points south and east. Passenger pigeons in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin were especially vulnerable to this technique. After 1880, there were essentially no birds left to trap. FSV

American Biology Teacher, 75/9, Nov./Dec. 2013, pp. 678-681

Book reviewChicago History: The Stranger SideRaymond JohnsonAtglen, PA, Shiffer Publishing, Ltd. 2013

Ray Johnson is a criminal investigator, historian and genealogist. He demonstrated his long-time interest in the occult, spiritualism, and improbable coincidence with his first book, Chicago’s Haunt Detective (Schiffer, 2011). Chicago History, The Stranger Side, is a stirring sequel.

How many of you get a kick out of a good ghost story, especially if the ghosts can be found right in Chicago’s own back yard? Or, you might enjoy an old-fashioned murder mystery or a case of missing persons, especially if a psychic is called in to help with the search.

Not only was the 1893 World Columbian Exposition one of the truly great events in Chicago’s history, it was also fodder for stories about Fair employees, exhibitors, and visitors. It was the site of intrigue, bigotry, murder as detailed by Erik Larson in his best seller, The Devil in White City (2003), and tragedy.

The Cold Storage Building, commonly called the Ice House, was built to preserve and chill food for Fair visitors. Poorly designed, it caught fire on July 10, 1893, killing fourteen firemen and three civilians. The stunned Chicago Fire Department laid its men to rest in local cemeteries, including Oak Woods Cemetery on Chicago’s South side. Six names on the plaque at the site commemorate the firemen who died, yet

Passenger Pigeon Trap and “Stool Pigeon”

A large net is held taut by ropes and bent saplings. Grain and other food items are spread on the ground. When the “stool pigeon,” on the right, is startled, it attracts overhead birds who then descend to feed. The feeding birds are ensnared when the trap is sprung. As many as 50 birds could be caught at one time.

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Chicago Architectural Foundation docent Eric Rogers details the 1890s residence on South Shore Drive at Cheltenham (79th) Street. Co-docent Mary Steenson of the Foundation provided additional information information about the history and architecture of the South Shore community. The tour was coordinated for HPHS by Board member Robert Despres.

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seven graves are clearly visible. Who is buried in the seventh grave? No one knows.

We learn why the landmarked Brewster Apartments in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, where Charlie Chaplin resided between 1915 and 1916, was once called a “haunted palace.” We are astonished at the numerous connections between local residents the sinking of the Titanic in April,1912. The 1956 murder of the Grimes sisters on Chicago’s south side and two other murders of young children, Johnson writes, “was a turning point in the amount of freedom that parents give their children.”

Ray Johnson captures our attention with his tales, and his questions pique our interest. It’s easy to be curious, but should we also be afraid? FSV

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Charles Whitman and Passenger PigeonsFrances S. Vandervoort

One of William Rainey Harper’s great successes in founding the University of Chicago in 1892 was enticing biologist Charles Otis Whitman to leave Clark University and come to Chicago. Whitman was one of those rare academicians who published relatively little but became highly coveted through his activities and students.

Born in Maine in 1842, Whitman seemed to lack interest in almost everything as a young child. One researcher said of him, “there is no hint from any of those I interviewed that young Whitman had any desire to play, draw, paint, climb mountains, travel, or build boat, engine, or carriage.” He was rescued at the age of 12 from a life of apathy by developing a strong interest in birds, a sure sign of exceptionalism. When his pet blue jay died, he stuffed it. Additional collecting of specimens ornithological and mineralogical transformed the family home into a museum of sorts. A cousin recalled the time

that Whitman endured pelting rain for hours as he stood in a pond with his gun awaiting the return of a bird he wanted for his collection. While at Bowdoin College all any recalled of him was that he devoted his spare time exclusively to the collecting of birds.

Whitman received a doctorate from the University of Leipzig, and taught at the University of Tokyo. He then spent some time at the Zoological Station in Naples, Italy, before returning to the United States, where he directed a laboratory in Milwaukie. He resumed his teaching career at Harvard, Clark, and finally Chicago. His research delved into such fields as animal behavior, embryology, evolution and anatomy. Although he was an energetic scientist he withheld publishing much of his work because he felt it would be premature unless he nailed down every detail and examined every reference. In the meantime, he founded and became the director of Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and founded and edited the Journal of Morphology.

Whitman loved pigeons. As a youth he watched pigeons by the hour. As a mature scientist, he amassed a large collection that eventually reached 550 live birds of around 30 species. He kept them in cotes around his house at 5238 South Woodlawn Avenue, just a few blocks from the University of Chicago.

And there were always a few inside his house, some serenading the human occupants with constant cooing. His goal was to study behavior, evolution, and genetics, and by working with such a wide variety of subjects he hoped to buttress his support of orthogenesis, a view holding that evolution is a directed and progressive process determined by the characteristics of the species rather than the more random effects imposed by the environment. This position had few adherents while he was alive and during the years it took for his works to be published posthumously, its vitality had ebbed to the points where his findings were largely

ignored. Whitman’s pigeons indirectly contributed to his death in December, 1910, at age 68. A sudden cold snap sent Whitman outside to bring his pigeons into warm quarters. Whitman contracted pneumonia from the exposure and died six days later.

On March 4, 1896 Whitman added one more species to his collection when he bought three passenger pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius) from David Whittaker of Milwaukee. By the following year, he had in his possession all fifteen of Whittaker’s birds. Although nine chicks hatched, only four survived. With nineteen birds, Whitman returned seven to Whittaker. Over the next few years, the overall number of pigeons in Chicago increased so that by the beginning of 1902 there were sixteen, divided between males and females. There were two hybrid birds, offspring of a male passenger pigeon and a female ring dove. Both turned out to be sterile males. Whitman noted the hardiness of the passenger pigeons: they fared well in their outdoor enclosures and resisted disease much more effectively than many of their neighbors. He called the species “my special pets.”

This flock of pigeons would be the only ones ever studies by scientists. Most of the attention devoted to the birds came from Wallace Craig, who grew up in Hyde Park, graduated from Hyde Park High School, and matriculated at the University of Illinois where he earned a bachelor’s degree. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago under Whitman’s tutelage in 1909. Craig’s principal interest was in animal behavior and whose observations of the pigeons focused on socialization and vocalizations. He even wrote the bird’s songs in musical notation.

As director of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Whitman considered it essential that he spend his summers at Woods Hole. So twice a summer he packed his hundreds of pigeons on either a “poorly ventilated baggage car” or “two freight cars” for the three-day trip between Illinois and Massachusetts. The irony is difficult to miss: these passenger pigeons never felt the exultation or weariness of extended flight for the only migrations they ever experienced were via trains.

From the high number of sixteen at the beginning of 1902, the flock began an irreversible downward spiral. The fate of Whitman’s collection might be seen as a macrocosm of the entire species. Eggs were laid, a few hatched, but now one young bird survived. Over the same time, the adults began to disappear: two escaped (they flew the coop at Woods Hole), two fell victim to tuberculosis, and others succumbed to causes unknown. One hen was given to the Cincinnati Zoo in 1902. Five years later tuberculosis claimed the last of Whitman’s birds, a pair of females.

Although Whitman expressed his desire to have perpetuated the passenger pigeons under his care, conservation seemed of little interest to him. In this, he was typical of the majority of academics and indeed his countrymen. Referring to passenger pigeons, the late historian Philip Pauly writes, “the fraying of the thread connecting American academic biologists of the continent, its organisms, and their problems can be seen, however, in the poignant life on one of the more unusual summer migrants to Woods Hole.” Several more decades would have to transpire before there was a formal push to enlist academicians in promoting the preservation of biodiversity. But among the advocates were a number who had been Whitman’s students.

Whitman dutifully answered letters about his passenger pigeons and was generous in providing photographs of them for use in numerous publications. It is likely that over 90% of all photos of live passenger pigeons were of his birds. But he never published anything on their plight. Even worse, given how conscientious he was in his own research, he failed to read the available literature that would have enlightened him that the pigeons did eat animal matter. The untrained Whittaker knew to feed his breeding birds worms and insects. When Whitman finally made the discovery on his own, he was sorry for not having furnished additional protein to his birds earlier, for they probably would have been healthier and produced more young. It has been suggested that some of the trips east might have coincided with the breeding period, thus further inhibiting reproduction. Whitman’s flock was gone. The only remaining bird, Martha, lived in solitude in the Cincinnati Zoo until her death on September 1, 1914. After her death, she was frozen into a 250 pound ice block and shipped by freight car to the Smithsonian Institution. Her small body was stuffed and placed on display, forever a reminder of human insensitivity and greed.

Note: This article is based in part on a work written by Joel Greenberg commemorating the 100th anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon. It includes segments that relate it more directly to Hyde Park.

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Whitman feeding his pigeons

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Mystery Quiz:Question: Who was the Director of Works for the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park?