Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Captain Jim Kolian Chicago Gang Leader

Captain Jim Kolian ran a gang of nine ghetto kids on Chicago’s west side. But the Captain wasn’t a kid; he was twenty-one and worked the kids for his amusement and profit. Some boys said he stood over them with a whip, threatening them if they didn’t do as he commanded. One time, he handed one of the boys a gun and told him to stand guard. “Shoot anyone who tries to interfere” was the order.[1]

 

Ike Khan and Sollie Cohen  (Chicago Tribune. November 15, 1901.)
Most of the boys were under twelve years old—some as young as seven. The Captain taught them how to steal, then sent them to the big stores downtown to grab what they could. He’d assembled a band of nine neighborhood kids in less than a year, among them—Sollie Cohen, Isador Kahn, Isaac Kahn, Charlie Meyers, James Klosiek, Charles Hadda, and Joe Kufner.

 

The only thing in the way of growing his operation was Policeman Francesca S. Capparelli, the truant officer. Capparelli kept rounding up Captain Jim’s kids and taking them back to school.

 

Things came to a head in November 1901 when the Captain decided Capparelli had to go.

 

“Jim told me to go to Rothschild’s store and take Ike Kahn,” said Sollie Cohen. “He told us to steal a revolver. When we got to the store, we couldn’t take anything because the man was watching us. He put us on the elevator and sent us downstairs, and said if he saw us in there again, he would have us locked up.

 

Saturday, June 5, 2021

General Napoleon Bonaparte Buford

 

General Napoleon Bonaparte Buford.
 
(The Portrait Monthly. August 1863.)

Napoleon Bonaparte Buford was born at Rose Hill, his family’s plantation in Woodford County, Kentucky, on January 13, 1807. He graduated sixth in his class at West Point in July 1827 and received a commission as second lieutenant of Third United States Artillery.
He was assigned to the Topographical Engineers Corps from 1828-1830 and did the survey for the slack water navigation in Kentucky. He later surveyed the land around Rock Island and the Des Moines River rapids on the Mississippi.

He took a leave of absence from the military in the early 1830s to attend the Harvard University Law School. After graduation, he taught natural and experimental philosophy at West Point.


Like many of his fellow West Point graduates, Buford found advancement in the peacetime army next to impossible, so he resigned from the military in 1835. He worked as a civil engineer in Kentucky, then relocated to Illinois in 1843, where he worked as a banker, manufacturer, and later as president of the Rock Island and Peoria Railroad.[ii]


He built his home, called “Ivy Place,” in Rock Island somewhere around 1849-1850. The inside walls were three feet thick, and it had a three-story circular staircase. The home had thirteen rooms with a fireplace in each room.[iii]


At the start of the civil war, Napoleon operated a bank in Rock Island. He was heavily invested in the southern securities and the financial crisis that ensued swamped his business. Buford signed everything he owned over to his creditors and re-enlisted in the service, serving as a colonel in the 27th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers. Abraham Lincoln appointed him a brigadier general of volunteers in April 1862.


He fought with General Ulysses S. Grant at Belmont Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. He later distinguished himself in the fighting at Vicksburg and Corinth. “His career has not been very showy,” noted the New York Daily Herald, “but it has, nevertheless, been a brilliant one.”[iv]


Napoleon served on the court-martial of General Fitz-John Porter after the Union debacle at the Second Bull Run.


When General Grant learned Lincoln intended to promote Buford to major general in 1865, he vigorously protested his appointment. Napoleon Bonaparte Buford “would scarcely make a respectable hospital nurse if put in petticoats,” exclaimed Grant. “He is unfit for any military position. He has always been a dead weight to carry, becoming more burdensome with his increased rank.”[v]

Beginnings of the Davenport Friendly Society

 

The Davenport Friendly Society purchased the  Claus Groth Gilde 
hall at 1228 West Third Street  in 1912. (The Daily Times.
April 10, 1912.)
The People’s Union Mission morphed into the Davenport Friendly Society in 1911. Reverend Ned Lee stayed on as the first superintendent of the society until his term ended on July 1, 1911. Then, Harry E. Downer assumed control.

The society grappled for some time over whether they should affiliate with a specific religion or not. Finally, it was decided to “leave religious instruction to the churches” and follow the societies’ mission of “improvement—moral, industrial, and educational.” They dropped “religious” from the mission statement altogether.

The organizational meeting made it clear the society’s work was not about “poor relief.” Its three principal aims were education, sociability, and recreation.[1]


When the Friendly Society took over, the neighborhood around the old mission was changing and becoming more industrialized. As the factories and businesses crowded in, fewer families lived nearby, so it was harder to serve the society’s target market. The Friendly Society purchased the Claus Groth Gilde hall at 1228 West Third Street in April 1912 for $13,000.