author
Mrs. John H. Kinzie
1806–1870
A vivid early voice of Chicago and the American Midwest, she turned firsthand frontier experience into books that still shape how readers imagine the region’s beginnings. Best known for blending local history, memoir, and storytelling, she wrote with an eye for both everyday life and dramatic change.
2 Audiobooks
Wau-Bun: The Early Day in the Northwest
by Mrs. John H. Kinzie
Wau-Bun: The "Early Day" of the North-West
by Mrs. John H. Kinzie
About the author
Born in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1806, Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie wrote under the name Mrs. John H. Kinzie. She became known as an American writer, historian, and pioneer of the Midwest, and her work helped preserve memories of early Chicago and the surrounding frontier.
She is best remembered for Wau-Bun: The Early Day in the Northwest, a widely noted account of life in the Great Lakes region, as well as for writing about the beginnings of Chicago. Modern reference sources describe her as an important recorder of frontier life whose books combined personal recollection, regional history, and narrative detail.
Kinzie died in 1870. For readers interested in the early Midwest, her writing remains valuable not only for its stories, but also for the window it offers into how nineteenth-century Americans remembered settlement, community, and change.