Middle West US
Exploring Midwest History and Culture
Sisters of Influence: A Biography of Zina, Amy, and Rose Fay
January 28, 2026
By Andrea Friederici Ross
Chicago in the 1880s grew faster than an overfed piglet. A seemingly endless daily roundabout of steamboats, carriages, and railroads brought goods, food, and new residents to help shape a city that had been wiped out in 1871’s catastrophic fire.
It was the fastest growing city in the world, a manufacturing mecca, a crucial hub of distribution in the relatively new Northwest, and a chaotic mess. Melusina Fay Peirce, an 1878 arrival accustomed to the more decorous rhythms of Cambridge, Massachusetts, described Chicago as “an enormous cabbage which might at any time turn into an equally enormous rose.”
Much has been written about the agricultural implements, meat-packing, steel, and other business enterprises that made Chicago a vital city. Perhaps less well known is the social evolution that took place alongside…Read More
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“Here on the prairies of Illinois and the Middle West we can see a long way in many directions…Here there are no barriers, no defenses, to ideas and aspirations. We want none; we want no shackles on the mind or the spirit, no rigid patterns of thought, no iron conformity.”
-Adlai Stevenson