USA > Missouri > A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements Until the Admission of the state into the union, Volume III > Part 22
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The first effort to do a banking business in Missouri was made in St. Louis. In 1808 Wilkinson and Price advertise that they have bills of exchange on the government for sale. Five years afterwards, in 1813, the Bank of St. Louis was organized, and four years there- after, the First Bank of Missouri. Both of these institutions, how- ever, became bankrupt after a short existence. Stephen R. Wiggins had a broker's office in St. Louis in 1817, and William O'Hara and Company conducted a private exchange bank there in 1819.
At the time of the Louisiana Purchase a number of merchants of St. Louis were engaged in the active local trade as well as in the more profitable fur trade of the interior. The change of government rapidly revolutionized business methods. The American merchants
100 Stoddard's Louisiana, p. 282.
101 Long's Expedition, vol. I, p. 222.
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not only established themselves at St. Louis, but also in the older settlements of Ste. Genevieve, St. Charles, New Madrid and Cape Girardeau, as well as in the new settlements which were rapidly established in the territory. To give a detailed history of all these various mercantile enterprises would lead too far afield; but to name at least some of the principal territorial merchants and traders of various parts of what is now Missouri can not be uninteresting. John Mullanphy, I think, was the first Anglo-Irish merchant to settle in St. Louis after the cession. He arrived in 1804 and at once engaged in business. By fortunate investments in real estate, owing to the rapid growth of St. Louis, he amassed a great fortune. His son Bryan Mullanphy, born in 1809, received a liberal education, studied law, was elected Judge of the Circuit court, Mayor of the city, and became one of the distinguished men and benefactors of St. Louis. The "Mullanphy Emigrant Home" owes its existence to his generous and liberal bequest. In 1809 John McKnight and Thomas Brady, two American merchants, arrived from Pittsburgh.102 Jacob Phillipson in 1808 came from Philadelphia, and opened a new store, selling drygoods and groceries "for cash at reasonable prices." This Jacob Phillipson was a son of Simon Phillipson who, however did not remove from Philadelphia to Missouri until 1820. Phillipson was perhaps the first Jewish merchant to establish business in Mis- souri. After 1811 he removed to Potosi, and, after remaining there for some time, returned to St. Louis. He was an accomplished linguist, and gave instruction in English, German and French. His brother, Joseph Phillipson, Sr., followed him to St. Louis from Philadelphia, in 1810, and purchased the first brewery which had been established west of the Mississippi, known as Habb's brewery. In 1816 he advertised in the Gazette that he would sell beer at eleven dollars per barrel and at six dollars per half barrel, one dollar deduc- tion if barrel returned. Phillipson's beer was then retailed at the
stores of Silvestre Labadie and Michael Tesson at eleven and one-half cents per quart. He failed in the business, but being a good musician afterward adopted music as his profession. The Phillipsons orig- inally came from Hamburg, Germany. In 1808, Wilson P. Hunt and John Hankinson; and in 1809 Falconer and Comeys, John Kerr and Matthew Kerr, and Berthold and R. Paul, William Shannon, and
102 Thomas Brady married a daughter (Harriet B.) of John Rice Jones; and Thomas McKnight married a daughter of John Scott of Ste. Genevieve. After Brady died John Scott married his widow.
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Samuel Perry all sold goods in St. Louis. John Steele advertised in addition to the new goods he offered for sale that he had on hand "two thousand gallons of whiskey." In 1810 Henry Von Phul came to St. Louis and opened a store. He remained actively in business from that time for sixty years. He was a most public spirited citizen, an enterprising merchant, and took a deep interest in everything calculated to build up the city. He was born in Philadelphia in 1784; in St. Louis married a daughter of Dr. Saugrain in 1816, and died at the age of ninety years in 1874, surviving all his contemporaries. H. M. Shreeve and Company in the same year brought from Philadelphia a stock of "drygoods, groceries, hardware, china, queensware, iron, steel castings and stationery;" so too Wood and Dunn "just arrived from Philadel- phia." John Arthur opened a new stock of goods during this year, and Horace Austin, a merchant of Ste. Genevieve, thence removed to St. Louis. In 1811 Zacharia Mussina came with fresh goods from Philadelphia; as also did De Pestre, and De Mun and Company from Baltimore. In 1813 the firm of Berthold and Chouteau opened a new store with new goods. In 1814 George M. Kennerly sold boots and shoes, and Peter Lindell and Company closed up their store; so too McKnight and Brady. But in 1816 Peter, John and Jesse Lindell advertised that they had received a general assortment of merchandise. James Kennerly was in business in St. Louis in that year, and so were James Clemens and Company; Rene and Gabriel Paul, and Lilburn W. Boggs, who afterward was Governor of Missouri, then was in partnership with Thomas Hanly.108 In 1817 Patrick M. Dillon opened up a new stock of goods in the house of Peter Chouteau. In the same year Stephen R. Wiggins, John B. Herpin and Son, John Little, Porter, Glasgow and Niven, Moses Scott, Charles M. Hunter, Sanguinet and Bright, M. Detandebaratz, Charles Wahrendorff and Thomas McGuire and Company were all engaged in active business there. The next year
108 Lilburn W. Boggs was born in Madison county, Kentucky, 1796 and died at Napa Valley, California, March 14, 1860. Served in the war of 1812 in the Kentucky volunteers, and in 1816 came to St. Louis, where he at first was engaged in mercantile business with Thomas Hanly; in 1819 he was cashier of the Bank of St. Louis; in 1820 he was assistant-factor of Fort Osage; then engaged in merchandising at Franklin, and in 1830 engaged in the same business in Independence. In 1832 was elected Lieu- tenant-Governor and in 1836 Governor of the state. The present State House was erected during his administration and the Mormons were expelled from the state. In 1823 he married Miss Panthea Boone in Montgomery county. In 1846 he removed to California.
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(1818) Renshaw and Hoffman, and George Hammond came with fresh groceries from New Orleans and N. C. Macklot and Company, Edward Tracy, Jonathan Guest were engaged in trade. In 1819 Chouteau and Sarpy stated that they removed their store to the old Indian office, and James Timon and Son opened a new store. James Timon, it should be noted, was the father of Bishop Timon of Buffalo, so eminent in the annals of the Catholic church. Papin and Joseph L'Amoureux in the same year advertised that they "will continue business in Gratiot's stone store." Joseph Hertzog, of Philadelphia, sent his two nephews Christian and Andrew Wilt to St. Louis to operate his shot-tower, soap factory and general mer- . chandise business, in 1811. They were men of large capital in 1820. In this year Joseph and Francis Robidoux were still in business in St. Louis. During this period no man occupied a higher or more influential position or was better known for daring enterprise among the business men of St. Louis than Manuel Lisa. He perhaps did more than any other of the early merchants of St. Louis to expand and build up the commercial interests of the city, for he was connected with all the early great commercial enter- prises of the city.
William Shannon, in 1806, was the principal merchant of Ste. Genevieve. In 1810 he was in business in St. Louis. The cele- brated ornithologist, Audubon, was also engaged in the mercantile business in Ste. Genevieve for a time with Ferdinand Rozier as a partner.104 They came down the Ohio together in 1810 with a stock
104 Audubon and Rozier met at Nantes in France and planned there to go into partnership. Together they came to Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. In 1808 they reached Louisville with a stock of goods, and for a time were reasonably successful as traders there. From Louisville, they went to Henderson and remained for several years. During this time Audubon's ruling passion was hunting and birds. The business proving unsuccessful, they concluded to remove to Ste. Genevieve, packed their goods and left Henderson on a keel- boat with 300 barrels of whiskey, in a snow storm. "The boat," says Audubon, "was good and stout and well trimmed, and had a cabin in her bow; a long steering oar, made of the trunk of a slender tree, about 60 feet in length and shaped at its outer end like the fin of a dolphin, helped to steer the boat; while the four oars from the bow impelled her along, when going with the current, about five miles an hour.". The boat passed the Cumberland and reached Cash river in what is now Alexander county, Illinois, and here Audubon says he met Count De Mun, also in a boat on his way to Ste. Genevieve. While camping he met some Shawnee Indians, and with them he went on a hunt. But he was finally prevailed on by Rozier to go up the Mississippi to ascertain if it was possible to go up the river, and accordingly went to Cape Girardeau and there made arrangements with a man named Loume (Lorimier, a son of Don Louis Lorimier) to take the boat up the river. After making the necessary preparations, Audubon says, they "left the creek, glad to be afloat once more in broader waters. Going down the stream to the mouth of the Ohio was fine
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of goods in a keel-boat, wintered on the Mississippi in Tywappity bottom, and early in the spring of 1811 came to Ste. Genevieve and opened a store. But although the business prospered, Audubon took no interest in it, for he was more interested in hunting in the woods
sport; indeed, my partner considered the worst of the journey over, but, alas ! when we turned the point, and met the mighty rush of the Mississippi, running three miles an hour, and bringing shoals of ice to further impede our progress, he looked on despairingly. The patron ordered the lines ashore, and it became the duty of every man "to haul the cordella," which was a rope fastened to the bow of the boat; and one man being left on board to steer, the others, laying the rope over their shoulders, slowly warped the heavy boat and cargo against the current. We made seven miles that day up the famous river. But while tugging with my back at the cordella, I kept my eyes fixed on the forests or the ground, looking for birds or curious shells. At night we camped on the shores. Here we made fires, cooked supper, and setting one sentinel, the rest went to bed, and slept like men who had done one good day's work. I slept myself as uncon- cerned as if I had been in my father's house." The next day, the boat started two hours before sunrise, and made ten miles, and for two days more toiled up the river, but then the weather became very cold and they were compelled to go into winter quarters in the great bend of the Tawapatee (Tywappity) bottom. Here Audubon maliciously says his partner was in "sorrow too great to be described. Wrapped in his blanket, like a squirrel in winter quarters with his tail about his nose, he slept and dreamed away his time, being seldom seen except at meals." No white man's cabin was within 20 miles of this camp. But for Audubon this was a delightful place. He rambled around in the woods, found the Indian trails and the lakes of the neighborhood. Soon the Indians, Audubon says Osages and Shawnee, came to the camp. The Osages were well- formed, athletic, and robust and of noble aspect, and hunted the few elk and buffalo still in the country. They were, he says, much more expert with the bow and arrow than the Shawnees. When Audubon made a tolerable likeness of one of them with red chalk, they were greatly astonished and laughed exces- sively. The statement, however, that Osages were then found on the shores of the Mississippi in what is now Mississippi county, and on friendly terms with the Shawnees, must be a mistake. In this camp, Audubon tells us he passed six weeks very pleasantly, studying the habits of wild animals, the deer, the bears, cougars, raccoons, and turkeys and many other animals, and he also drew more or less by the side of the great camp-fires. "No one," he says, "can have an idea what a good fire is who has never seen a camp-fire in the woods of America." While in camp, they made the best of it. The Indians, he says, made baskets of cane, Mr. Pope played the violin, and he accompanied him on the flute, the men danced to the tunes and the squaws looked on and laughed, and the Indian hunters smoked their pipes with such "serenity as only Indians can." Finally, the ice broke and after escaping the new danger of being crushed by it, they managed to reach Cape Girardeau, but found little sale there for their goods and whiskey, and hence moved on to Ste. Genevieve. With some difficulty, they passed the rapid current at Grand Tower, but here no doubt, while pulling the "cordella" but looking up to the sky, he says he first saw "the grey eagle he named after General Washington. At Ste. Genevieve after all this laborious and expensive journey, they found a good market for the 300 barrels of whiskey they had on board the boat and he says, "the whiskey was especially welcome," and that for "what we had paid 25 cents a gallon brought us two dollars." But he was not pleased with Ste. Genevieve and he says that he enjoyed his time much more in the "Tawapatee" bottom. He records that he met a Frenchman at Ste. Genevieve who had been with the expedition of Lewis and Clark. Ferdinand Rozier was born at Nantes, Brittany, France, November, 1777; was in the French naval service in 1802. Rozier married Constantine Roy; they had ten children. He attained the age of 86 years and his wife the age of 83.
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and in painting, from nature, birds and fowls. As a result the part- nership was dissolved April 11, 1811. Rozier was long the principal merchant of this town.
In New Madrid as early as 1793, Bogliolo and Michel in the mercantile business, formed a partnership which continued until 1810.106 M. H. Stallcup and Christopher C. Houts were merchants in Winchester, in New Madrid county, in 1819. Richard Jones Waters, Steinback and Reinecke and Goah Watson were engaged in the mercantile business in New Madrid either before or immediately after the purchase of the Louisiana territory. Goah Watson settled in New Madrid in 1804 and for many years was the leading merchant there.
At Cape Girardeau, Waters and Hall, John Magee, Daniel Stein- back and Reinecke, as well as Lorimier sold goods; so also did Steinback and Jasperson, Charles G. Ellis, Garah Davis, Joseph Rogers, Robert Smith, George Henderson and Simon Block. In 1818 Andrew Giboney and D'Lashmutt were in the mercantile business here. Among these merchants Steinback was perhaps the most prominent. He had settled in Louisiana during the Spanish government and married a daughter of Lorimier; he was a German, and a man of great enterprise.106 After Jackson was laid out, in 1815, we find that a Mr. Eckhart of Virginia opened the first store there. Within a year he sold out to Clifton and Charles Mothershead; this firm subsequently sold out to Samuel Cupples, a son-in-law of Judge R. S. Thomas. John Scripps, Lyne Starling, E. N. D'Lashmutt, Edmond Rutter, John Whittenberg, Frizzel and VonPhul, and Armour and Juden were merchants in Jackson between 1815 and 1820. What almost seems incredible now is that Armour and Juden employed Robert Morrison to drive a team to Baltimore and haul goods thence to Jackson for them, and that he successfully accom- plished this trip in three months. Samuel Cupples was in partnership at Jackson with Thomas Mann and subsequently with Thomas Jones. Nathan VanHorn was another early merchant there, as well as Ralph
106 In connection with this partnership an important litigation arose in early territorial days. It seems that in 1800 Bogliolo departed for Europe, returning in 1812 after the death of Michel in 1810; and the question arose as to the duration and extent of the partnership, Michel the administrator contending that Bogliolo's departure for Europe and leaving Michel in charge of affairs dissolved the partnership, but the court held that the partnership existed until the death of Michel in 1810. Over $100,000 was involved in this litigation which was finally settled at Jackson in 1822.
106 He died on his way to Baltimore on a business trip in 1825.
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Daugherty and Jonathan Guest. In 1820, Ashley and Massey were merchants at Louisiana; Shaw, Matchett and the Colliers at St. Charles in 1821. In Franklin, among the early territorial merchants were Paul Ingram, Richard D. Bonsfield, Giles M. Samuel and Company, Robert Hood and E. O'Haire. Bonsfield (an English- man, who afterward did business at Boonville and Pisgah) not only sold dry-goods, but "wines and liquors as well." James C. Ludlow also was a merchant at Franklin, and advertised that he would sell at auction "dry-goods, tin and hardware, crockery, castings, and a black girl eighteen years of age, fifty bushels of fresh flour, two hundred bushels corn meal and a variety of furniture." Major James C. Ludlow was a grandson of General James Chambers of Pennsyl- vania, who served during the Revolutionary war. His mother came to Missouri in 1820 from Cincinnati; was a friend of Mrs. Washington and received from her many marks of attention when she was a girl and visited Philadelphia. Ludlow was a miller, but his mill burned May 11, 1821. In this year N. Hutchison was the druggist of Franklin. Thomas Mize, residing near the home of Captain G. Stapleton, on the Bonne Femme creek, in Howard county, advertised that he had on hand "iron and steel, and a quan- tity of tools for sale," and offered to sell axes at $2.75, hoes at 25 cents an inch, to shoe horses at $1.75 per horse, and to do "other work in proportion." Tiffany and Company were merchants at Chariton.
Nothing tended more to the rapid settlement of the country than the inauguration of steam transportation. At present we can hardly conceive how slow and laborious the journey up the Mississippi river by keel-boat. It required weeks and months to go up the river from New Orleans to St. Louis. These boats almost literally crept up the river. Not only was the mode of transportation slow and laborious, but the expense of moving freight in this manner was very great. Then as if by magic, the invention of the steamboat changed all this. General Daniel Bissell says that, even after the steamboat had greatly reduced the cost of travel, the expense of going to New York was one hundred dollars and upwards, and that it took fourteen and fifteen days to make the trip.107 In 1811 it took Stephen Hempstead from the 12th day of April to June 13th to make the journey from New London, Connecticut, to St. Louis, traveling all the time. In 1815 Colonel Post left New York on August 15th and arrived in Shawneetown on October 29th. Rev. John M. Peck consumed 107 See letter of General Lewis Bissell in Archives Missouri Historical Society.
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nearly a month passing through Pennsylvania when he came west in 1818, and, reaching the Ohio on the Ioth of September, he did not arrive in St. Louis until December Ist, traveling by water down the Ohio and up the Mississippi. From the mouth of the Ohio to St. Louis, he was on the way in a keel-boat seventeen days, involving hard work all the time. And in 1827 it was deemed worthy of note that Stephen Hempstead, junior, reached Washington from St. Louis in fourteen days, making the trip from St. Louis to Louisville on the steamboat "Plowboy" and the trip from there to Wheeling on the steamboat " Messenger" in four days. Freight rates, measured by our standards, were enormous. In 1819 the first two steamboats going up the Missouri river contracted to carry the government freight up the river to Council Bluffs at eight dollars per 100 lbs .; but they failed to do so, the boats being unable to stem the current.
When the first small steamboat, named "General Pike," com- manded by Captain Jacob Reed, landed in St. Louis in 1816, most of the inhabitants of the town lined the shore to gaze on the novel sight. The advantage of transportation by steamboat was fully appreciated by the inhabitants on the Ohio, Mississippi and Mis- souri rivers. The vast distances that had separated the towns and settlements from New Orleans were by this means almost obliterated.
But it was a question then whether steamboats could navigate the Missouri river, and in no subject were the people along this river more interested. When the steamboat "Independence," com- manded by Captain Nelson, made the first trip from St. Louis to Franklin and Chariton, and returned within twenty-one days, it was said that this "formed a proud event in the history of Missouri," and that the trip demonstrated that the Missouri river could not effectually resist steam navigation. The fact that the steamboat "Washington" made a trip from St. Louis to Franklin in six days was a matter of congratulation there; the " Missouri Intelligencer" said that "the practicability of steamboat navigation" was thus established "beyond a doubt; a fact of immense importance."
No little importance was given to Long's expedition by the fact that the voyage was being made to the upper Missouri by steamboat, the vessel being the "Western Engineer" built and equipped for the United States. Everywhere on the western rivers this was considered an extraordinary venture. This steamboat reached a point seven miles below Council Bluffs, the highest point reached by such means at that time. The "Western Engineer" in that far out-of-the-way
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country greatly astonished the Indians, the bow of the boat exhibiting the form of a huge serpent which, says the St. Louis "Enquirer" "was calculated to attract and awe the savages." Yet in the same year Colonel Talbot Chambers and 260 men of the Rifle regiment went in five barges up the Missouri river, the trip to Franklin from Bellefontaine cantonment consuming eighteen days. In 1819 Gen- eral Atkinson with the Sixth regiment came up the Missouri in eight barges, which we are told "made a handsome appearance in front of St. Louis." Arrived at Bellefontaine the regiment was taken up the Missouri in three steamboats and four barges, the steamboats being "The Expedition," Captain Gray, the "Johnson," Captain Colfax, and the "Jefferson," Captain Orfurt. The barges were propelled by sail and wheel. It took the steamboats from June 22d to August 29th to make 350 miles, an average of five miles a day, to Council Bluffs, but the keel-boats made the trip up the river at the rate of ten miles a day.
Flint, who had traveled up and down the river on keel-boats and afterward had the privilege of traveling on a steamboat, and intoxi- cated with joy with the speed and comfort of steamboat travel, says "It is now refreshing, and imparts a feeling of energy and power to the beholder, to see the large and beautiful steamboats scudding up the eddies, as though on the wing; and when they have run out the eddy, strike the current. The foam bursts in a sheet quite over the deck. She quivers for a moment with the concussion; and then, as though she had collected all her energy, and vanquished her enemy, she resumes her stately march and mounts against the cur- rent, five or six miles an hour." 108 And lost in admiration at the wonderful advance from the slow upward movement of the keel-boat, at 'the rate of six miles a day, he says, "A stranger to this mode of traveling would find it difficult to describe his impressions upon first descending the Mississippi in one of the better steamboats. He contemplates the prodigious establishment, with all its fitting of deck, common, and ladies' cabin apartments. Overhead, about him, and below him, all is life and movement." 100 Then speaking of the time when he first traveled on these western waters, and before the era of the steamboat, he says, "This stream, instead of being plowed by a hundred steamboats, had seen but one. The astonishing facili- ties for traveling, by which it is almost changed to flying, had not
106 Flint's Recollections, p. 107.
100 Ibid., p. 108.
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been invented. The thousand travelers for mere amusement that we now see on the roads, canals and rivers, were then traveling only in books. The stillness of the forest had not been broken by the shouting of the turnpike makers. The Mississippi forest had sel- dom resounded except with the cry of wild beasts, the echo of thun- der, or the crash of undermined trees, falling into the flood. Our admiration, our unsated curiosity at that time, would be a matter of surprise at the present, to the thousands of hackneyed travelers on this stream, to whom this route, and all its circumstances, are as familiar as the path from the bed to the fire."110
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