Excerpt from Encyclopædia of Biography of Illinois, Vol. 1 The lives of the men who have built up this great State, and shaped its history, are well worthy of permanent record. The State of Illinois, and especially the City of Chicago, owe their origin and their present greatness to a class of men who in energy, enterprise, ability and success in their various walks of life are simply the wonder of the age. It is the purpose of this work to present the history of these men as completely and accurately as possible, and the publishers congratulate them selves ou being able to place before the public the story of their careers, accompanied, except in a few instances, by such faithful and excellent portraits. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.