Bennett’s School as it appeared in 1844. The building was constructed in 1839 at the southwest corner of State and Madison and was originally occupied by George C. Collins as a schoolhouse, before S. C. Bennett moved his school there. The artist took some liberty with historical fact by showing Potawatomi providing maple sugar to the school children. Virtually all members of the Potawatomi community had been forcibly removed from their ancestral lands to areas west of the Mississippi by 1840.
This print was found tucked inside the book The Story of Old Fort Dearborn, written by Chicago historian J. Seymour Currey in 1912 for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Fort Dearborn.