Arent Schuyler De Peyster, a British officer who commanded posts at Michilimackinac and Detroit in the 1770s and 1780s, retired to Scotland after the Revolutionary War. An acquaintance of Robert Burns, he published an autobiographical volume of fanciful verse in 1813. DePeyster makes a sketchy reference to Jean Baptiste Point DuSable's residence in Chicago in a footnote to a lengthy verse entitled "Speech to the Western Indians" that DePeyster claimed to have delivered on July 4, 1779. Other evidence indicates that DuSable was in what is now Michigan City in 1779, that he was put in charge of managing a British estate in Michigan in the early 1780s, and that he settled in Chicago in the mid-1780s. Nevertheless DePeyster's footnote has led many to assume that DuSable had settled in Chicago by 1779.

Author: Arent Schuyler de Peyster
Source: Chicago Historical Society (ICHi-37969)