USA > Missouri > A history of Missouri from the earliest explorations and settlements until the admission of the state into the union, Volume I > Part 38
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11 Philip de Rocheblave was in command at Kaskaskia when General George Rogers Clark invaded Illinois, and conquered the Northwest; sent as a prisoner to Williamsburg, Virginia, where he broke his parol and fled to New York; he was a member of the noble Canadian family, Rocheblave de Rastel. I Sulte's Canadien-Francais, p. 44. After the transfer of upper Louisiana to Spain, he seems to have returned to Kaskaskia; entered the British service and attained the rank of colonel in the British army. The mother of Rocheblave was Lady Diana Francoise Elizabeth de Dillon; his father's name was Jean Joseph de Rastel, lord of Rocheblave and Savournon. He was a descendant of Raimond du Rastel, seized of the territory of Rocheblave, for which he did hom- age in 1274. On May 22, 1760, Rocheblave was ordered by Pierre Joseph Neyon de Villiers, major commanding the province of Illinois, to take two boats to Fort Massiac (Massac) with fifty soldiers and supplies, superseding Lieutenant de Clouet at Massiac; and Major De Villiers especially orders "to have prayers offered up every evening and morning, and to put a check upon the blasphemies and oaths to which the soliders are only too much addicted." In 1773 Father Meurin, then parish priest at Ste. Genevieve, baptised his infant daughter, Rosalie, and Father Hilaire a son in 1774 named Henri. Evidently he remained a resident at least until then.
12 Pittman's Mississippi Settlements, p. 95.
13 General Archives of the Indies - Audiencia of Santo Domingo, etc.
14 Letter of Pedro Piernas to Governor Count O'Reilly, dated October 31, 1769.
15 Joseph Labusciere was the successor of Jean Baptiste Bertlor Barrois at Fort de Chartres; he came from Canada; married Catherine Vifvarenne at the village St. Phillipe; was king's attorney, notary and greffier there; one of the first to move to the west side on the cession of the eastern Illinois country to England; first in Ste. Genevieve, and in St. Louis in 1766. This Joseph
34I
CAZEAU'S EFFECTS
localities in the Royal jurisdiction of Illinois," resided in Ste. Gene- vieve, but afterward removed to St. Louis. As such attorney, Labusciere on March 15, 1766, advised Joseph D'Inglebert Des Bruisseau Lefebvre, judge of this same jurisdiction, and residing in St. Louis, that the Indians had captured one Cazeau when coming up the Mississippi from New Orleans, and that Cazeau had a lot of merchandise on board a boat belonging to Jean Louis Lambert dit Lafleur, a prominent merchant at Ste. Genevieve, and that the rights of Cazeau ought to be protected. On this official notice Judge D'Inglebert Des Bruisseau at once departed to Ste. Genevieve, which, in the legal proceedings resulting from this notice, was stated to be twenty-one leagues (sixty-three miles) distant from St. Louis, accompanied by Labusciere and Louis Cabaziere, the notary and gref- fier of Ste. Genevieve, who appears to have gone to St. Louis to give the notice to the judge. On arrival they went to the house of Lam- bert, and summoned him to show "the effects, trunks and bales belonging to Cazeau," which Lambert promptly did, showing that Du Breuil, Du Rieu and Larralde (Duralde) had already attached seals to same. Then these seals were thereupon removed in the presence of Rocheblave, the commandant, Lambert, Datchurut, Vallè, Blondeau, Leclerc, and Fagot, all at that time residents and merchants of Ste. Genevieve. The goods were then care- fully examined and inventoried, and the judge submitted to the merchants there assembled what it was best to do with the merchan- dise and things belonging to Cazeau, and upon their advice the goods were placed in custody of Lambert, he to keep the same without charge, but two negroes named Sampson and La Rose, who had also come up on the boat in charge of Lambert, were turned over to M.
Labusciere, in June, 1782, returned to Cahokia and died there April 29th 1791, but it is supposed by Billon that he died at New Madrid. There was a Joseph Labusciere in New Madrid in 1803, who was "21 years old and upwards." American State Papers, ii Public Lands, p. 577, and may have been a son or relative .- Billon's Annals, vol. i., p. 29. Name also spelled Labuxierre and Labussiere. The St. Ann Church records show that a Jos. de La Buxiere was the son of Charles Leonard de La Buxiere, of the diocese Limoges, France. Querre : Possibly name was LaBuissoniere, and a relative or descendant of Alphonse de Buissoniere, who succeeded d'Artaguiette as commandant of Fort de Chartres in 1739. It has been well observed that the orthography of the French family names of the 18th century, as spelled in America, present great difficulties. Thus the name of the Ordonnateurs d'Auberville was written "Daubreville" and the name of "Bobé des Closiaux" "Bobbe des Clozieau." This Des Closiaux was ordonnateur at De Chartres in 1760. - Villiers du Terrage's Les Dernières Années, p. 453.
342
HISTORY OF MISSOURI
Fagot, to be sent to M. Vaugins at New Orleans.16 What ultimately became of the goods of Cazeau is not recorded, nor whether he even escaped Indian captivity, but from these proceedings we inci- dentally learn who were the early merchants of Ste. Genevieve and the manner in which public business of this character was then transacted.
The first marriage contract of which we have any record in this village was made May 19, 1766, between Pierre Roy and Jeanette Lalond. At that time it seems M. Robinette also acted as a notary and greffier. In the same year a second land sale, being a conveyance by Pierre Aritfone to Henri Charpentier, was duly made and entered in record by this notary. The next conveyance was by Joseph Ledon to LeFebvre du Chouquette; another sale was made by Guillaume de Rouselle to Francois Vallè, and finally the ancient salt works on the Saline with ten negroes, cattle, kettles, etc., were sold by Jean La Grange to Daniel Blouin. This Blouin was a merchant at Kaskaskia, but also operated largely in lead at Mine La Motte, and was a son-in-law of Joseph Chauvin dit Charleville.17 In 1767 he again sold these salt works to Jean Dat- churut, and by his deed conveyed six negroes, one half interest in some negro cabins, parcels of land he had accquired from La Rose, Tossin and Moreau, some mineral, two hundred and eighty-four pigs of lead owned in partnership with M. Beauvais, ten horses and necessary tools, a house and lot in Ste. Genevieve acquired from the minors of one Linn, fifty pigs of lead at the Salines, two leaden kettles for making salt, a pump shed, one hundred and fifty cedar stakes, all of which property was sold to Datchurut for forty- nine thousand livres18 "in genuine money," not furs, which at that time passed as currency, delivering possession June 17, 1769, all except a piece of ground in dispute between Blouin and one Catalan.
16 Billon's Annals of St. Louis, vol. i., p. 34.
17 His son, Charles Charleville, was captain of the French company, with Clark at Vincennes. Two sons of Charles Charleville, named Jean Baptiste and Charles, afterward removed to St. Genevieve. St. Gem says that Charle- ville was a son of Joseph Chauvin, Marquis de Charleville, who died at Kas- kaskia in 1778. Charles Charleville married Marie Louisa Lionval (or Lionnois) on June 1, 1776. A Louis Chauvin lived in Ste. Genevieve at a very early day. His son, Pierre, married there in 1773. A Françoise Chauvin dit Charle- ville was a resident in 1782, and a Françoise Chauvin dit Joyeuse died there in 1781. He was also a native of Kaskaskia.
18 A "livre," name of an old French coin, equal or of the value of 183 cents of our money; unit of value under the French monarchy.
343
A NOTARIAL OFFICE
This early Ste. Genevieve conveyance is recorded in the archives of St. Louis,19 and gives a tolerably good idea of the value of property at that time. In 1769 we also have a record of a sale of a negro for 1,250 livres, by Isidore Peltier, another early inhabitant of Ste. Genevieve, to Louis Blouin, probably a relative of Daniel Blouin.
A notarial register's office was established in 1766 at Ste. Genevieve. Louis Cabaziere was the first notary and greffier. Both under the French and Spanish law, a notary is a much more important officer than under our law. Under the civil law, the notary is a judicial officer, and his acts have the force and effect of judgments in many cases. In business transactions requiring the execution of a written contract, for instance where persons associate in a partnership, or make loans, or engage to render service for a certain period, or where estates of deceased persons are taken possession of or settled, or inventories taken, or public sales made, or marriage contracts, or last wills and testaments made, and in short, almost every transaction of life needing care and certainty, the services of a notary were required, and notaries were enjoined to keep a register or to record such instruments so executed before them. By a proclamation of Unzaga of November 7, 1770, it was expressly ordered, in order to prevent "frauds and malpractices," that "no person, whatever be his or her rank or condition, shall henceforth sell, alienate, buy or accept as a donation or otherwise, any negroes, plantations, houses and any kind of seacraft, except by a deed executed by a notary public."20 Cabaziere, it appears, was succeeded by Robinette as notary and greffier, and at a later date Charles Augustin Fremon de Lauriere 21 for a number of years was notary and greffier of the village.
From an entry in Cabaziere's notarial record, it interests us to find
19 I Billon's Annals of St. Louis, p. 41. 20 Gayarre's History of Louisiana, p. 631, appendix.
21 This De Lauriere, Lord du Bouffay and des Croix, was born near Nantes, France, and driven by the storms of the French Revolution to Louisiana. He was a notary and greffier until 1802, when he gave up the position to devote himself to the manufacture of salt. In 1799, married a daughter of Louis Chauvet Dubreuil; the family adopted the name of "Fremon." He was a slave owner, and for a time acted as deputy surveyor; had a grant on the Mississippi, and in 1801, with Louis Le Beaume, operated salt works at a place on Salt river, called "La Saline Ensanglantèe" (The Bloody Saline) ; had four or five furnaces, and De Lassus says, brought samples of salt to St. Louis, which were superior to any made in other salines. Albert Tisson testified the firm lost a great many boats on the Mississippi and on Salt river, and were in great danger from Indians, being obliged to fortify themselves, for which purpose they had a cannon.
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
that a controversy involving the right to dig lead at Mine La Motte arose as early as 1770. This record shows that one Chatal states that he never dug lead at Mine La Motte, and denies that he and his associate, Gaignon, ever importuned the commandant with an appli- cation to prospect for lead there. It further appears that one Mena- ger and Fomblon certify that one Picard did not work this mine. All of which statements are duly certified by the notary and duly regis- tered by him for the protection of the owners of the mines. Evidently Mine La Motte even then was a subject of anxious interest to parties claiming the same.
Another small international incident which occurred in the early history of Ste. Genevieve perhaps deserves notice here, and relates to a flat-boat of which one Slater was captain. He had contracted to take Andrew McDonald, Aaron Bennett, Terrence Mooney, An- drew Coil and Patrick Shone down the Ohio and up the Mississippi, but when he came to the mouth of the Ohio, instead of going up the Mississippi, kept on going south to the mouth of the St. Francois, fraudulently telling his passengers that they were still on the Ohio, intending to take his boat and passengers to Natchez. At the mouth of the St. Francois the passengers met a Spanish pirogue and were advised where they were, and then and there, on account of his treachery, these five passengers with true American spirit took the law into their own hands, seized the boat in the name of the United States, and taking aboard two Spaniards, Benito and Motard, turned back the boat up the river, intending to land at Kaskaskia, and there deliver the boat to the authorities. Not being familiar with the river, they passed the mouth of the Kaskaskia river and when they came in sight of Ste. Genevieve, Benito and Motard raised the Spanish flag, landed there and the boat then was seized by the commandant, Don Fran- cesco de Cartabona. The Americans went over to Kaskaskia, and made complaint to Colonel Todd, who was in command there. He at once addressed Don Fernando de Leyba, lieutenant-governor at St. Louis, stating the facts and demanding that the boat be delivered to the American authorities. De Leyba ordered that the value of the boat be assessed and the money paid over to Colonel Todd. The Spanish appraisers were Francois Lalumandiere and Louis Bolduc, the American appraisers, Thomas Tyler and Daniel Murray, and they met in Ste. Genevieve in 1779 before Don Francesco Vallé, then civil judge at Ste. Genevieve, in the presence of Juan Purzada, sergeant
345
VALLÉ COMMANDANT
in the stationary regiment of Louisiana, and --- Dupre, assessed the value of the boat and thus this small international affair was adjusted. Motard, the Spanish passenger who came up on the boat, probably was the same Joseph Motard who erected the wind mill in St. Louis and died there, eighty years of age, in December, 1802. Benito may have been Benito Vasquez.
But to us the most important incident in the administration of Rocheblave seems, that one Andre Vignon, in 1767, the year after Rocheblave assumed command, appealed a case from his decision to the Supreme Council at New Orleans. This appeal shows that some citizens of Ste. Genevieve had already accumulated property, for evidently Vignon was a man of substance, because it was very expen- sive then to carry a case from the local commander to the Supreme Council at New Orleans, involving at that time a trip in a canoe or pirogue of a thousand miles down the river and return, and in addition, legal expenses in and about the courts of New Orleans were notori- ously great. But such incidents give us a glimpse of the wealth, as well as the independent spirit, of some of the French settlers in these early settlements, and where the government was administered so autocratically.
O'Reilly appointed Valle first civil and military commandant of Ste. Genevieve. Pittman says that he was "the richest inhab- itant of the country of the Illinois," raised great quantities of corn and provisions; was the owner of one hundred negroes, and in addition "hired white people" and "kept them constantly employed."22 Vallé acted as such officer until January, 1778, and then as civil judge until September 23, 1783, when he died at the old village, aged sixty-eight years. Piernas in 1769 reported to O'Reilly that Vallé was "an habitant who abandoned his possessions in the English district" when it was ceded, and that he principally furnished all "the provisions and effects that have been asked for the sustenance of the troops and the other Spanish employees during all the time that they have remained there." At that time he also furnished the supplies to the Indians. We know little of this Don Francesco Vallé; but he seems to have been a man of liberal disposition. During the Revolu- tion he sympathized with the Americans. On October 14, 1780, when Major McCarty, the American officer then in command of Cahokia, on his way down the river in small boats to aid in the relief of Fort
22 Pittman's Mississippi Settlements, pp. 95-6.
346
HISTORY OF MISSOURI
Jefferson, stopped at the village, he reports that he received from him a donation of twenty-two loaves of bread for his men. McCarty on this occasion left some of his sick men there, sending word to Kennedy, in charge of the Virginia stores at Kaskaskia, to take care of them. It is also recorded that twenty-two Indians then living near Ste. Gen- evieve joined McCarty's force as volunteers, going with him down the river, Vallé as commandant making no objection.23
Vallé was succeeded as military commandant by Don Sylvio Francesco de Cartabona,24 by order of Don Fernando de Leyba, when he came up from New Orleans in 1778, but he did not supersede him as civil judge. Cartabona was a lieutenant in the Spanish ser- vice, and stationed at Ste. Genevieve until 1784. In 1780 he went to St. Louis from Ste. Genevieve with a company to assist in the defense of that village.
Shortly after war was declared in 1779 between England and Spain, it was generally rumored that the English intended to take and reduce both "Pancour" and "Misere," 25 as well as Cahokia and Kaskaskia on the east side of the river. Cahokia and St. Louis were attacked, but no attack was made on Ste. Genevieve, no doubt because the attack on St. Louis and Cahokia failed. When after the attack on St. Louis, De Leyba became seriously ill in June, 1780, he sent for Cartabona, to take charge of affairs in St. Louis. De Leyba made his will in his presence as the officer next in rank, and when De Leyba died, Cartabona acted as commandant of St. Louis ad interim.
In December, 1783, a case arose before Cartabona as lieutenant and acting judge of Ste. Genevieve, which shows that even at that early day ladies were personally responsible in actions ex delicto. It seems that Mrs. Isabel Bissette Vachard, wife of Louis Vachard dit Lardoise, of St. Louis, was complained of by Jean Datchurut, Jean Baptiste Vallé, and Louis Bolduc, who then owned the Saline salt
23 Draper's Collection of Clark MSS., Wisconsin Historical Library.
24 For some reason not explained, his name is also given as Don Sylvio Francesco de Cartabona de Oro, but he simply signs his name as witness to the will of De Leyba as "Sylvio Francesco de Cartabona." It is said that he took sixty men to St. Louis to aid in its defense, but that when the Indians, led by the English, made the attack on the town, Cartabona could not be seen, and the greater part of his men hid in garrets and concealed themselves, all of which is certainly fictitious, as many other statements palmed off as early history of St. Louis.
25 II Wisconsin Historical Collection, pp. 150 et seq.
347
PEYROUX
works, that she came down to these works with her boat loaded with clothing and dry goods, and traded these off for salt, corn, grain and meal, to the negroes there, causing the slaves at work to steal from their masters and then run off to avoid punishment. The principal witnesses were Jean Baptiste Racine and Alexis Griffard, the latter "boss" of the salt works. In consequence of this complaint the boat was seized and sold in St. Louis, but owing, it is said, to the high standing of Mrs. Vachard there, the plaintiffs relinquished prosecu- tion. The costs in this case amounted to 563 reals, a real being 12} cents. This is the last proceeding in which the name of Carta- bona appears in upper Louisiana.26
Cartabona was succeeded April 20, 1787, by Henri Peyroux de la Coudreniere, captain of infantry, who remained in charge of the affairs at Ste. Genevieve for several years. From the order of his
Peyroux Dela Condreniery
appointment, we learn in a general way the extent of the powers exer- cised by the subordinate commandants of upper Louisiana. The- post commandant was empowered to issue passports, but had no authority to issue trading permits, this being a perquisite of the lieu- tenant-governor. In case they sent a lancha, or boat, to New Orleans they were required to give the lieutenant-governor notice of the fact, so that he could send dispatches with it. Peyroux was especially required to be on the outlook for information as to the movements of troops of the United States, and to inform the government promptly. In all matters concerning the political relations with the United States the powers of these officials appear to have been carefully limited. Before the appointment of Peyroux, when Colonel Rogers, stationed at Kaskaskia, demanded from the commandant, Vallé, in 1770, the surrender of two deserters who had taken refuge at Ste. Genevieve, or if he did not wish to do so, to return the uniforms worn by the de- serters, Vallé replied that he would return the uniforms in order to
26 In 1772 there was a merchant in St. Louis, an officer also of the garrison, named Antonio X. Joseph de Oro, who may have been related to him. He lived in St. Louis 13 years and rose to the rank of captain and died in Ste. Genevieve in August, 1787. It may also be that "Oro" is the name of a village in Spain, and that both Cartabona and Joseph came from this place.
348
HISTORY OF MISSOURI
preserve good relations, but that he could not surrender the deserters without express orders from the lieutenant-governor, Cruzat, and when the matter was submitted to Cruzat he advised Colonel Rogers that he could not decide the matter, and had referred it to his govern- ment.27 The post commandants were also expected to preserve tran- quillity with the Indians, promote increase in the population, develop agriculture, and authorized to receive at their posts all Catholics who might present themselves, advising the lieutenant-governor and the government in a proper manner. In 1789 Don Manuel Perez, lieu- tenant-governor, made Peyroux a concession of 7,760 arpens of land. Nouvelle Bourbon was situated near this grant. Peyroux was a man interested in scientific matters. In 1791, on his way to Europe, he met Jefferson while in Philadelphia. That Jefferson must have been impressed by his conversation appears in a letter he wrote him in 1803 from Washington, and in which he makes reference to his acquaintance with him twelve years before, and the pleasure it gives him to renew it.28 After his return from France to Ste. Genevieve, from secret instructions of Carondelet in 1796 to Lieutenant-Colonel Don Carlos Howard, in command of the Spanish forces in upper Louisiana, it appears that he was not then in good repute with the high Spanish officials at New Orleans. Brackenridge says that Peyroux "was a man of no mean literary reputation," and the author of several publications, chiefly geographical, "of considerable merit." In one of his essays he maintained the opinion with much ingenuity that the northern lakes formerly discharged themselves into the Mis- sissippi by the Illinois, as well as by the St. Lawrence. His strongest reason is drawn from the present width of the channel of the Illinois, which appears to have contained once a much larger river, and the appearance of the naked rocks which bound the valley of the Missis- sippi, below the Illinois, as far down as the mouth of the Ohio, and the immense alluvion which stretches thence to the ocean.29 In an- other "very ingenious essay," according to Brackenridge, "he ren-
27 Letter of Cruzat, dated October 22, 1780, in General Archives of the Indies, Seville.
28 Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, vol. vii., p. 253.
29 Brackenridge's Recollections of the West, p. 241. He predicts that "at no distant day the labor and ingenuity of man will restore the connection between the lakes and the Mississippi, by means of an artificial canal, thus affording the greatest inland navigation in the world." This now it is proposed shall be done by the general government.
349
VALLE FAMILY
dered it even probable that the ancients had been acquainted with America in very remote antiquity." 30
In 1796 Peyroux31 was succeeded by Don Francesco Vallé, fils, as civil and military commandant. Vallé remained commandant until his death, March 6, 1804, about the time Louisiana was trans- ferred to the United States. He was suc- ceeded by his brother, Jean Baptiste Vallé, who was appointed commandant by Gover- nor William H. Harrison, on the transfer of the territory to the United States. The Vallé family, it appears, was always very in- fluential, and high in favor with the Spanish authorities at New Orleans. Jean Baptiste Vallé says that when he was in New Orleans in 1795, Baron de Carondelet, at that time governor-general of Louisiana, asked him to accept land donations for himself and family, and that he told him that he had received grants of land from the sub-delegates, and that Baron Carondelet then said to him, "If you have not enough, ask for more."32 Don Francesco Vallé, junior, married Louise Charpentier in 1777, and resided in a one-story frame building with wide galleries near South Gabourie creek, and his residence still stands in the present city of Ste. Genevieve. Carondelet had great confidence in him, and said that he was "deserving of great trust." He was buried in the old Catholic church of Ste. Genevieve, under his pew.33 Trudeau, in 1798, said of him : "The personal qualities which this man possesses make him one of
30 Brackenridge's Views of Louisiana, p. 181, note.
31 In 1788, Donna Margareta Susanne Jouolt, widow of Charles Peyroux, made a will at Ste. Genevieve in which she mentions as her son, Henri M. Pey- roux, and this may be the same.
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