[7] Kinzie died while vacationing in Amagansett, New York, Long Island, in 1870, after a druggist accidentally substituted morphine for the quinine she ordered.

In 1844 Kinzie published Narrative of the Massacre at Chicago, August 15, 1812, and of Some Preceding Events, anonymously, but acknowledged authorship soon after publication.

Kinzie described her journeys back and forth to the early settlement of Chicago, and complex cultural encounters with a diverse frontier society.

Unusual for its day, the book also described sympathetically and in detail the lives of Native Americans, who were being displaced by her extended family and other white settlers.

An appendix included excerpts from the journals of relative Thomas Forsyth, who blamed the United States (rather than the Sauk) for starting the war.

John Kinzie served as U.S. Army paymaster for Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois troops in the Civil War and died of a heart attack on his way to a vacation shortly after President Lincoln's assassination.

The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Wisconsin, who own the house, restored and refurbished it in 1932 as their centennial project.