August 24 Illinois History Minute

It’s August 24th, and one of the fourteen individual treaties that make up the Treaty of St. Louis was signed on this day in 1816. With this particular treaty, the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomie tribes sold off a strip of land that would later be used for canals linking Chicago with the Illinois River.

Educator Zonia Baber was born in Kansas Township in Edgar County on this day in 1862. Baber became an innovator in the teaching of geography and geology at the University of Chicago.

Marlee Matlin, the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award, was born on this day in 1965 in the Chicago suburb of Morton Grove.  Matlin won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in “Children of a Lesser God”, her debut film, in 1986.