No portrait of Jean Baptiste DuSable exists, but by the time of A. T. Andreas's History of Chicago in 1884, he had already become an iconic figure. The frontispiece to the first volume of Andreas's history presents an imagined portrait alongside an imagined view of his house and its setting north of the Chicago River. Several problems exist with this depiction. Evidence indicates that DuSable was in what is now Michigan City in 1779 and did not settle in Chicago until the mid-1780s. In addition, DuSable's farm house was not as modest as drawn here; when he sold it in 1800 the farm was a sizeable estate, and including a mill and a bake house. John Kinzie later lived in the same house, which Andreas described as the "Kinzie mansion."

Artist: Unknown
Source: Chicago Historical Society (ICHi-37461)