Looking For Mr. Boizard

By Barbara Kelly
Sun contributor

Mr. J. Oliver Boizard, Chicago, May 18, 1864: “About the beginning of next month I will try to send you some Mackrel. There has been terrible fightings between the Two Armies, and I suppose they will fight terribly at the taking of the Rebel Capital (Richmond).”

Marietta Boizard (his daughter), Glen Arbor, May 21, 1864: “Momma says you had better send her a table and an oil cloth instead of a fish.”

Mr. Boizard, Chicago, June 3, 1864: “I sent you by Propeller Granite State your table and oil cloth. Cost $8.50…”

In this article I will continue to examine life during the Civil War through the first-hand accounts found in the fascinating Boizard letters, written between 1855-1888, and found in an old house in Glen Arbor. My focus here is on the letters written to and from Mr. John Oliver Boizard, who lived in Chicago from 1864 until his death in 1870, while his wife, Eleanor, and daughter, Marietta, lived in the woods across from the northern shore of Fisher Lake. The letters were preserved over the decades and have been published in two terrific books: The Boizard Letters: Letters from a Pioneer Homestead (TBL) and Long Distance Love 1855-1870 (LDL). The former book contains beautiful pen and ink sketches by the talented Grace Dickinson Johnson (visit her photography gallery next to Art’s), while the latter book is a more complete set of letters. Both books are available for purchase at the Cottage Book Shop.

By focusing on Mr. Boizard, I bring into view the early Chicago-Glen Arbor connection, an element of which is still with us today. Just as Mr. Boizard earned his living in Chicago and then sent money to support Mrs. Boizard in Glen Arbor, many of our seasonal residents earn their money in Chicago (or places like it) only to spend it here in Glen Arbor each summer. This makes Mr. Boizard a sympathetic figure.

A couple of years ago I launched a search for signs of Mr. Boizard in Chicago, where I’m from, just as I had searched for Mrs. Boizard here in Glen Arbor, when I traipsed through mosquito-filled woods during several vacations to find the site of her log cabin. Because Mr. Boizard mentioned Chicago street addresses in his letters — for both his place of residence (on S. Canal Street) as well as employment (Washington near Dearborn, and later, LaSalle Street) — I thought my search would be easy. For one thing, I didn’t have to wander around in buggy woods to look for where he once lived and worked. I also figured that after a few Internet searches through Chicago records I’d be done. In fact, I was highly confident that “looking for Mr. Boizard” in Chicago would be much easier than “looking for Mrs. Boizard” in Glen Arbor. It turned out I was very wrong.

Two key events make looking for Mr. Boizard very difficult. One problem is that the city of Chicago has changed the way street addresses are numbered three times since its founding in 1833, with the last change occurring in 1909. If you think it’s easy to get lost in Chicago now, imagine what it was like the day after those street addresses changed! Lots of deep dish pizzas were probably delivered to the wrong houses.

The other intervening event was the Great Chicago fire of October, 1871. I’ve heard lots of statistics about that devastating fire over the years, but here’s one that I became very aware of when searching for Mr. Boizard, who died one year before the fire: no Chicago death certificates are available before late 1871, as the fire destroyed all county vital records (births, marriages, deaths) prior to that date. So even though I took a course to assist my Boizard search at the Newberry Library in Chicago called, “It Didn’t All Go Up In Flames: Researching Pre-Fire History,” it sort of seemed to me that it really did all go up in flames. I have not yet been able to find any record — other than the Boizard letters — of John Oliver Boizard in the City of Chicago.

This means that the letters written by Mr. Boizard to his family and friends in Glen Arbor offer a very rare and useful record of life in Chicago prior to the Great Fire. Even his Glen Arbor friends at the time thought so, well before the fire. In a letter sent to him from John and Harriett Fisher, the early Glen Arbor settlers, we read, “[We have] concluded that our newspaper news here is very imperfect, we would be very grateful for any information that is agreeable for you to give us, in fact the neighbors as well as ourselves Hail a letter from Mr. Boizard as a godsend in the way of news,” (January 31, 1862, LDL, p. 62).

An exceptional treasure of a letter is one Oliver wrote on April 16, 1865, to his wife, Eleanor, where he intersperses news of national importance with his efforts to support his family in Michigan:

“I send by the propeller ‘Maine’ 1 barrel of flour and a box of groceries … I also send you a copy of the News, [in] which you will find deplorable news as regards the murder of the President. The whole country is placed in solemnity. All buildings in the City of Chicago are decorated with Crepe. Old men weep in the streets; men appear to be infuriated at the dastardly act. J. Wilkes Booth, the actor, is supposed to be the murderer. I will write you again the 1st of May.” (TBL, p. 40).

This letter was written two days after the assassination of President Lincoln, and in it we get a remarkable first-person account of the response of people in Chicago to the event. Mrs. Boizard wrote back to Oliver on April 24, 1865, responding to the news and relaying her travails and needs closer to home, “There were three or four Propeller ships in yesterday at Mack’s Dock [McCarty’s Dock in Glen Haven]… and they brought the news of the assassination of President Lincoln. Now for domestic affairs, we are very glad the Lake is open so that the boats can run as we have to pay $2.00 for 8 pounds of meat … our tea is almost out … Please send Marietta a pair of shoes as hers is much worn out and she gets her feet wet every time she comes or goes through the swamp,” (LDL, p. 112).

On May 3, 1865, Mr. Boizard wrote to Mrs. Boizard, “Booth, the Murder, has been killed by a Sergeant of New York Calvary. They fired the barn … and exterminated the murderer. President Lincoln’s remains will reach here [Chicago] sometime on Monday, and all businesses will cease … Gen’l Johnson has surrendered all the forces of Georgia and South Carolina …” (TBL, p. 42). Disconsolate, but trying not to be too cranky, Mrs. Boizard responds, “We are out of flour and I baked the last baking … you did not send me in any onion sets. No more at present. But I remain your ever affectionate wife …” (May 12, 1865).

In the fall of the same year, 1865, Oliver Boizard was sent to Springfield, Illinois, the state capital, the home of the Abraham Lincoln family prior to his election as President, and the place where Lincoln was buried. On November 8, 1865, he wrote to Eleanor about visiting Lincoln’s tomb: “Last Sunday I went to Oak Ridge about 12 miles from town, and I saw the Vault of Mr. Lincoln … Four persons are allowed at a time to look at the Vault through the Iron Grating. The place is the most Beautiful I see. There are a squad of soldiers stationed there.” (TBL, p. 50).

Epilogue – Back to Looking For Mrs. Boizard: “I found her!” What happy words to hear from the young man who assisted me on a rainy, soggy evening last week as we both looked for yet one more sign of Eleanor Boizard in Glen Arbor. And just like he said, there she was, hanging out at the thirteenth hole of Mike and Becky Sutherland’s “The River at Crystal Bend” Putt-Putt Golf Course (if you don’t believe me, check her out for yourself), proving once again how much fun there is in searching for Mr. and Mrs. Boizard and reading history through the Boizard letters. Just ask the putt-putt golf course worker I recruited to help me look for Mrs. Boizard.