CHICAGO (CBS)-- In 1833 in Chicago, the mail came once a week from Michigan to the 350 residents of what was a four-square block hamlet. In 1833, Chicago stood on the American frontier.

Chicago was officially incorporated in 1833 as a town, and granted a city charter four years later. By the end of its first decade, it had exploded to 4,470 inhabitants.

Oriented with north to the right, a map issued by Walter Conley and O. E. Stelzer in the early 1900s, depicts Chicago at the time of its incorporation in 1833, ... 1833, in Chicago.

This 1898 map shows Underground Railroad routes overlaid with a drawing of Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church ... Between 1833 and 1850, Chicago’s population increased from roughly 300 to just under 30,000.

On March 5, 1833, Thomas Jefferson Vance Owen, the government’s Indian agent in Chicago, sent a letter to Elbert Herring, commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington.