Chicago was a muddy little log town on the edge of the plains when 17-year-old John Stephen Wright stopped there with his father in 1832, and opened The Prairie Store to outfit pioneers who were heading west. Two years later young Wright had made a small fortune in real estate, was worth $200,000. At 20 he owned a warehouse, dock, 7,000 acres along the Illinois & Michigan Canal. He knew nothing about farming but he thought farmers ought to learn more about it. So in 1841 he started The Union Agriculturist and Western...
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