Following the Supreme Court decision, the U.S. District Court ordered Beaubien's payment returned, but the military realized the fort unnecessary since Native Americans had left the area. Therefore, the General Land Office proceeded to ready the property for subdivision and public auction as the "Fort Dearborn Addition to Chicago" (reserving only space for a lighthouse and quarters for the harbormaster). The subsequent sale of 233 lots raised $106,042.16 for the federal government, despite the decline of real estate prices after the Panic of 1837.Roden, pp. 157-161 Beaubien had pleaded with fellow Chicagoans not to bid on the six lots which contained his home seventeen-plus years earlier, as well as garden and outbuildings (many previously legitimately from the government during the fort's downsizing). Nonetheless attorney James H. Collins, who had assisted the government's case against Beaubien's claim, bought five of the six lots for about $1000, and Beaubien could only purchase one of them, for $225. Either Beaubien then sold his lot when he couldn't buy the rest of his homestead, or Collins actually evicted Beaubien from his Michigan Avenue home in 1839.John Wentworth, "Fort Dearborn" an address delivered to the Chicago Historical Society on May 21, 1881 in Edward Gay Mason, Illinois in the Eighteenth Century: Kaskaskia and Its Parish ..., Volume 16 (Chicago:Fergus Printing 1881) p. 39 available at https://books.google.com/books?id=PR5JAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA39&lpgAndreas p. 86Gilbert J. Garraghan, "Early Catholicity in Chicago," Illinois Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 1, p. 26 (1918)available at https://books.google.com/books?id=hpYOAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA26 p. 26 n.33 cites Henry Hurlbut's Chicago Antiquities pp. 302-336 and Daily American June 18, 1839 However, Collins was later less successful in his lawsuit against the Illinois Central Railroad for encroaching on his lakefront property, and when the federal government formally abandoned the lighthouse and harbor area in 1854, Beaubien's friend, Congressman John Wentworth secured special legislation allowing Beaubien to patent those nine lots.Roden pp.160-165According to ancestry.com, the petition raised in the 3rd session of the 25th Congress, journal page 305, was tabled.
