 Illinois
has no direct whaling heritage,
but there are many connections
to New England's whaling industry.
For example, a barrel scraper
exhibited in "Whaling in
the South Seas," made by
Vaughn & Bushnell of Chicago,
manufacturers of ship-, block-,
and hog-scrapers, is only one
of Illinois' myriad manufactures
to find its way to the East.
Conversely -- especially in
the great industrial centers
on Lake Michigan -- whale products
provided the raw materials for
a variety of manufactures, from
carriage springs and buggy whips
to machine oil and shoe polish.
It may also interest residents
of the Land of Lincoln to know
that the first great American
whaling fortune, assembled by
oil merchant and whaleship-owner
Edward Mott Robinson of Providence,
was heavily invested in Chicago
real estate in the 1850s and
'60s; and that was where the
real fortune was made -- a fortune
inherited in the 1860s and managed
thereafter by Robinson's notoriously
parsimonious daughter, Hetty
Greene, "The Witch of Wall
Street."
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