Meanwhile, local Native Americans agreed to relocate across the Mississippi River in the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, so many expected the fort's permanent closure.

[5] McConnell leased the lakefront land to John Jackson, but the U.S. Army again occupied the fort, so Major Lafayette Wilcox was living on part of the tract.

In reversing, the Court ruled that the original settler of the property did not acquire title because it was reserved from sale by the president under the authority of the 1830 act.

Therefore, the United States General Land Office proceeded to ready the property for subdivision and public auction as the "Fort Dearborn Addition to Chicago" (reserving only space for a lighthouse and quarters for the harbormaster).

[7] Beaubien had pleaded with fellow Chicagoans not to bid on the six lots which contained his home seventeen-plus years earlier, as well as garden and outbuildings (many previously legitimately from the government during the fort's downsizing).

[8][9][10] However, Collins was later less successful in his lawsuit against the Illinois Central Railroad for encroaching on his lakefront property, and when the federal government formally abandoned the lighthouse and harbor area in 1854, Beaubien's friend, Congressman John Wentworth secured special legislation allowing Beaubien to patent those nine lots.