George W. Dole

Dole opened the first grocery store in Chicago. It was located at Dearborn Street and Water Street. This area would later become the site of the city's wholesale market.[1] Dole created the first slaughterhouse in Chicago, processing 150 head a day by 1833. That year Newberry would send beef and hides produced by Dole to eastern US markets, Chicago's first such shipment.[2] From this beginning, Dole is credited with the establishment of the meat packing industry in Chicago, which would later grow into a long-term major industry for the city.[1][7] Dole also, in partnership with John H. Kinzie, built the city's first steamboat.[8]

Newberry would, in 1835, make Dole a partner of his trading house, which was renamed Newberry & Dole.[3] After Newberry retired, Dole partnered with his nephews George F. Rumsey and Julian Sidney Rumsey to reform the house as Dole, Rumsey & Co. The company was one of the charter members of the Chicago Board of Trade. This partnership continued for six years until Dole retired on January 1, 1853. The house was then known as Rumsey Bros & Co., until it ceased operations in 1891.[4][9][10]

Rumsey was one of the incorporators of Chicago when it became a town on August 5, 1833.[4][11] Five days later, Dole was elected to the town's inaugural board of Trustees along with Madore B. Beaubien, E. S. Kimberly, John Miller, and Thomas Jefferson Vance Owen.[11] On September 3, 1833, Rumsey was appointed the board's inaugural treasurer.[12] Dole also served on the Chicago Board of Water Commissioners.[3] He was an elected trustee of the Chicago Orphan Asylum.[13]

Dole was the director of the first state bank of Illinois and helped to organize the Chicago Board of Trade.[8] He served as the postmaster of Chicago in the early 1850s.[3]

Dole was a member of the Whig Party,[14] and later the Republican Party.[3] He was the unsuccessful Whig nominee in the March 1844 Chicago mayoral election, losing very narrowly. The election result was voided by the Chicago Common Council, which claimed that there had been electoral fraud by the Democratic Party.[15][16] Dole did not run in the subsequent April do-over election, however.[17] Dole was an early and active member of the free Kansas movement, and became the treasurer of a national committee for the cause.[3] Millard Fillmore appointed Dole as postmaster of Chicago during his presidency.[3][8]