8/21/2025: a most interesting bike ride/exercise morning at Graceland Found the Pinkerton memorial, saw a bunch of huge hawks and watched a new monument being erected.
Dexter Graves, 1789 – 1844
Graves was one of the first settlers who, according to the inscription on the back of the polished black granite slab, “brought the first colony to Chicago, consisting of 13 families, arriving here July 15, 1831 from Ashtabula, Ohio, on the schooner Telegraph.”
The bronze figure, “Eternal Silence,” was created in 1909 by sculptor Lorado Taft, whose monumental “Fountain of Time” stands at the west end of the University of Chicago Midway.
Allan Pinkerton (August 21, 1819[ – July 1, 1884) was a Scottish-American detective, spy, abolitionist, and cooper best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in the United States and his claim to have obstructed the plot in 1861 to assassinate then president-elect Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, he provided the Union Army – specifically General George B. McClellan of the Army of the Potomac – with military intelligence, including extremely inaccurate enemy troop strength numbers.[ After the war, his agents played a significant role as strikebreakers – in particular during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 – a role that Pinkerton men would continue to play after the death of their founder.
The man dubbed America’s first “private eye” was born near Glasgow, Scotland, on July 21, 1819. Involved as a young man in radical politics, he was forced to emigrate to America in 1842. Pinkerton and his wife settled in the Chicago area, where Allan worked as a barrel-maker. By accident he discovered the lair of a gang of counterfeiters and had them arrested. The resulting celebrity led to his appointment as a deputy sheriff and then special agent for the U.S. Post Office, where his success in catching criminals continued. Around 1850 he formed Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, with the motto “We Never Sleep” and an unblinking eye as its symbol. This would lead to the description of independent detectives as “private eyes.”
In addition to being a noted crime fighter, Allan was also a committed abolitionist. When in l858 John Brown freed 11 slaves in a raid on two Missouri homesteads and set out to take them to freedom in Canada.
Jesse James
Pinkerton vowed vengeance on the outlaws who still espoused the Confederate cause. “There is no use talking,” he wrote of the James brothers, “they must die.” In January 1875, a group of Pinkerton detectives and sympathetic locals raided the James farm, but their plans went awry when an incendiary device they tossed into the house exploded, wounding Zerelda and killing Jesse’s eight-year-old half-brother Archie. Public opinion rallied to the James family as never before, and the Pinkerton agency was excoriated for the raid. Stung with his worst defeat, Pinkerton gave up the chase.
Allan Pinkerton died in 1884, just two years after Jesse James, but his sons William and Robert took over the running of the agency. Pinkerton detectives were often hired as muscle for factory management during bitter labor strikes.
Went to Max’s via bike after a ride through the newly renovated Argyle Street yesterday. I don’t have Hetflix at this time but he does and we both greatly enjoyed it.
This documentary perfectly captures the talent, focus, uncontrollable urge, weirdness, and circumstances that shaped and catapulted DEVO. Highly recommended, even if you can’t stand or understand their music. DEVO’s many influences that helped shape rock ‘n’ roll and performance art are undeniable.
Alex Zander is at Graceland Cemetery & Arboretum:
The finished monument they erected yesterday. After some research I discovered that neither have passed yet
