Berry Tavern is a historic site of murder, misfortune, and mass death. Built by Fortunatus Berry in 1840 as a stagecoach inn along the Old Chicago Stageroad, Berry Tavern is one of two remaining buildings from the mining settlement and frontier fort known as Gratiot’s Grove. Is was here in the doorway that a man named William Caffee shot and killed Samuel Southwick (cousin of Fortunatus Berry’s wife Adeline) in February 1842.
Caffee was hanged in Mineral Point near the Walker House, where his spirit is said to still roam. Fortunatus went bankrupt in 1844. He died in 1847 and is presumed to be buried somewhere on the property, but it’s not known where.
A cholera outbreak in 1854 killed as many as two dozen people, including the town doctor and the coffin maker. Bodies were piling up so fast they had to be stored in the tavern’s root cellar until they were eventually buried in a mass grave nearby.
