Stephen Mack Jr.
Stephen Mack Jr. (February 2, 1798 – April 10, 1850) adventurer and pioneer, American Fur Company employee, founder of Rockton, Illinois.
Stephen Mack, Sr. was engaged in the mercantile business at Tunbridge until 1807 when he went to Detroit, leaving his wife and family behind.
The senior Mack valued education, and knowing that there was little opportunity in such a remote frontier village, he had his family remain in Vermont.
He entered into a partnership which was known as Mack & Conant which remained in business until 1821 when it was bought out by its chief competitor The American Fur Company.
Edson I. Carr's history of Rockton, published in 1898, relates a romance that Mack learned from traders at Green Bay about Illinois and possible opportunities there, so Mack traveled to the Rock River to the present site of Janesville and then traveled south into Illinois.
It is much more probable that the truth was that Mack had already known that Lasallier was there and had intended to work for him as a clerk, a usual practice for trading companies.
On September 29, 1830 he bought two lots in Chicago in the block bound by Randolph, Market, Washington and Water Streets.
By about the second week of June, army regulars from Michigan began arriving in Illinois to continue the war, and by mid-June Mack's company of militia was dissolved.
Subsequently the daughter died young making Joseph the legal heir and owner of the section, and on January 17, 1838 Thiebeau sold the land to Jean Baptiste Beaubien, a well-known trader active in Chicago for many years.
By June 1838 Beaubien was a partner with Stephen Mack, and, along with John P. Bradstreet, began selling lots in the new community.
With this money Mack built himself a fine two-story frame house with a cellar, which later became the residence for the forest preserve caretaker and is now a museum.
Sometime during 1842/43 Mack built the first bridge across the Rock River in Illinois, formerly located where the public boat landing is presently.
He was incompetent, and when he died March 25, 1844, he left Stephen Mack with substantial debt and much useless merchandise.
In an election held April 2, 1850 Mack ran for the position of the first Township Supervisor of Rockton and was narrowly defeated by Sylvester Talcott.
Land for the Rockton Cemetery was donated to the village by one of the Talcott's, and Mack refused to have his own family members buried there.
Mack, Hononegah and one of their sons were buried in a cemetery which is near the present golf course club house and is marked by a boulder with a memorial plaque.
The cemetery was in such poor condition that Smith announced that he intended to plow the site under, and if anyone had family buried there, they had better move them soon.
In May 1964 the executive committee for the forest preserve decided that Rockton's founding father should be buried next to the Mack home and announced that they were moving their remains back to Macktown.
The forest preserve waited until the dead of night of July 23, 1965 when they exhumed their remains and reburied them near Mack's home.
