John Logan and the History of Logan Square

via http://www.usmemorialday.org/ — John Logan was a war hero and politician who helped shape the history of Illinois and the United States. Photo: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [LC-B8172- 6403 DLC (b&w film neg.)]

Who is John Logan and why is Logan Square named after him?

General John A. Logan was a solid guy. He was born in Southern Illinois in 1826, which used to be where all the people of Illinois lived. After fighting in the Mexican War, he traveled back to Jackson, Illinois, to run for office as a Democrat. Since this was before the Civil War, the Democrats wanted things to be like the old days, where people owned other people.

After what must have been a lot of careful deliberation, Logan decided to do the right thing and fight to preserve the Union. And he did a really good job. You can read the whole story here. And I do mean the whole story. People get really into this Civil War stuff.

But the main point is that he was good at fighting and he invented Memorial Day. That’s the correct term for when you make a holiday, right? For his war-winning and holiday-inventing service to the country, they named a rapidly growing neighborhood of immigrants in Chicago after him in the early 1900s.

So the statue on the Square must be his, right? Wrong! His statue stands in Grant Park. The statue in the middle of Logan Square is the Illinois Centennial Monument, which celebrates another great moment in Illinois history. I’ll tell you about that next time.

Want to learn more about Logan Square history? Check out my other article: A Brief History of the Blue Line Station.

—Mike