USA > Missouri > A history of Missouri from the earliest explorations and settlements until the admission of the state into the union, Volume II > Part 5
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That the marriage relation was entered into with due circum- spection in St. Louis in those early days is evidenced by the fact that from 1766 to 1770 not less than sixteen marriage contracts were made and duly recorded by the notary in the new village. The first marriage was celebrated on April 20, 1766, and the high contracting parties were Toussaint Hunaud, from Canada, a hunter and trapper, and Marie Beaugeneau.56 The first child born in St. Louis was John B. Guion, September, 1765, son of Amable Guion, Senior, a stone mason by trade, 67 and Margaret Blondeau. And the first death of which we have a record is that of Jean B. Olivere, buried January 7, 1771, Rene Kiercereau officiating.58 The first graveyard was the church-yard on Second street. A graveyard seems also to have been located near or on the present courthouse lot, and which was unconse- crated ground and where Protestants and Indians were buried. It was in this graveyard that it is supposed that St. Ange had Pontiac interred.
Dr. Auguste Andre Conde, who settled in the village in 1766, and died November, 1776, was the first physician of St. Louis,59
55 See St. Louis Archives, cited I Scharff's History of St. Louis, p. 74.
58 Toussaint was a son of Louis Hunaud of Ste. Genevieve. Antoine and Louis Hunaud, junior, were his brothers; the widow, Charlotte Hyacinthe, of Louis Hunaud, in 1776 married Louis Ride, senior. (I Billon's Annals of St. Louis, p. 419.)
57 This on authority of Judge Wilson Primm, related to the Guion family. The family came from Kaskaskia. Amable Guion, senior, had a grant on Lit- tle Prairie near St. Louis, and was killed by the Indians in 1780. Amable Guion, junior, owned property at Carondelet, and died there September 18, 1813, aged fifty years.
58 But it is quite certain that between the first settlement of St. Louis and January, 1771, deaths occurred among the residents, although not recorded.
59 Dr. Conde was a native of Aunis, France, surgeon in the French service at
27
EARLY PHYSICIANS
and, according to his books, nearly every family in the town was in debt to him for professional services, among the list of debtors being St. Ange de Bellerive, who died December 26, 1774. Dr. Jean B. Valleau, who came up the river with Captain Rui in 1768, secured a concession of a lot from St. Ange, and made a contract with Peter Tousignan, one of the early carpenters and builders of the town, to build a house of posts eighteen feet long by fourteen feet wide, shingled roof, stone chimney, partitioned in the center, door in partition and door on the outside, two windows and shutters, well floored and sealed with well jointed cottonwood plank, and the pay for this work to be " sixty silver dollars," Dr. Valleau to furnish the iron and nails. When it is remembered that this work was all done by hand, even the plank sawed out of the logs by hand, no machine work and steam to help, "sixty silver dollars" must seem an extraordinary low price to us in our day. Dr. Valleau did not live long in St. Louis, but died on the 24th of November following. His will is dated the 23rd of November, and in it Duralde is named as executor, and it is witnessed by St. Ange, Labusciere and Joseph Pa- pin, then a trader in St. Louis. Duralde sold the house and lot in December, 1768 for 251 livres ($50), but his personal effects, it ap- pears, were sold in 1771, after the arrival of Piernas "in the village of St. Louis, in the Spanish part of the Illinois." 60 Shortly after the death of Dr. Valleau, in 1771, we find that "Joseph Connand, surgeon," purchased a stone house from Papin dit Lachance, and infer from this that he was a practicing physician in St. Louis at that time.61 Dr. Antoine Reynal arrived in St. Louis about 1780, and began to practice his profession, re- maining until 1799, when he removed to St. Charles, where he Fort de Chartres where he married Marie Anna Bardet de la Ferne, July 16, 1763, died November 28, 1776; his widow married Gaspard Roubieu, dit Euro- pean, removed to St. Charles with him, and they both died there.
60 Billon's Annals of St. Louis, vol. I, p. 60. I Scharff's History of St. Louis, p. 185.
" This Connand lived in this house for seven years (Billon's Annals of St. Louis, vol. I, p. 161). His name occurs several times during that time. Seems to have moved away. In 1781 a Dr. Jacques François Connand was "as master of surgery received in the jurisdiction of Illinois," and likely the same person. (53 Draper's Collection, Clark MSS. No. 78.) A Joseph Connand in 1784, and whose signature, says Draper, looks like that of Dr. Connand, meaning Jacques François, was in Havanna on the island of Cuba in that year, and afterwards trader from the Illinois to New Orleans down the Mississippi. A Joseph Connand seems to have been an early settler on Burginon river near Natchitoches, in lower Louisiana, and may be the Dr. Joseph Connand of St. Louis. Perhaps his name was Joseph Jacques François Connand, and he may have used sometimes the first and sometimes his other Christian names.
28
HISTORY OF MISSOURI
died in 1820. Contemporary with Dr. Reynal as a physician, we also find Dr. Claudio Mercier, who came up to St. Louis from New Orleans in 1784. Dr. Mercier was a native of Lavasiere, Dauphiny, France, where he was born in 1726, and died in St. Louis in January, 1787. Dr. Bernard Gibkins, a native of Germany, who afterward lived in Ste. Genevieve where he died in 1784, during the years 1779 and 1780 was also a resident physician of St. Louis. The most eminent of the early physicians was Dr. Antoine Saugrain,82 who came to St. Louis in 1800. He was a native of Paris, France, and removed to the United States in 1787. Dr. Saugrain was a man of great scientific attainment and a per- sonal friend of Benjamin Franklin, at whose instance he emigrated to the United DR ANTOINE SAUGRAIN States. He first resided at Gallipolis, but moved to upper Louisiana, no doubt in- duced by the liberal land policy of the Spaniards. As to the general health of the country, Trudeau, in 1791, wrote that the "mortality has been heavy, and came only from colds in the chests," the only "dangerous illness" of the country; that in general work-people have been victims "because of the badly founded preconceptions of some against bleeding, and the lack of a blood-letter for others."
The first grist-mill impelled by horse or ox power, was built in St. Louis in 1766 by Joseph Taillon usually pronounced Tayon. To secure water-power he first damed the Petite Rivière with a small dam. Before this mill was built the settlers used mortars and hand-mills to make meal and flour. Taillon, in 1767, sold out to
62 Dr. Saugrain was born in 1763, he married Genevieve Rosalie Michau, also born in Paris July 23, 1776, in Kanawha county, Virginia, opposite Galli- polis, March 20, 1793. He first came to the United States with M. Piquet, a botanist, and M. Raquet, in 1787; he then prepared to establish himself in Kentucky. Jefferson recommended him as well as Mr. Piquet warmly to General George Rogers Clark in a letter. (16 Draper's Notes, Trip 1860.) In the same year he went to Pittsburg, from Philadelphia, and on a flat boat descended the Ohio, where near the Falls of the Ohio the boat was attacked by the Indians. M. Piquet was wounded and drowned in the river, and M. Raquet killed and scalped by the Indians. Saugrain was captured, but in the night escaped with a man by the name of Pierce. After this experience Dr. Saugrain returned to France, but in 1790 returned and became one of the founders of Gallipolis, and in 1799 moved to Portage des Sioux between Missouri and Mississippi, and from there to St. Louis in 1800, where he received a large grant of land from De- Lassus; was also at Carondelet. He died May 19, 1820, his wife survived him forty years and died at the age of eighty-four, July 13, 1860.
29
GRANTS OF ST. ANGE CONFIRMED
Laclede, who raised the mill dam to increase the water-power and equipped the mill with two pair of mill-stones. After Laclede's death Auguste Chouteau, in 1779, acquired the property and operated a mill here during a half century. In 1784 or 1785 Jos. Motard built a windmill out of stone on what is now Third street.
After Piernas assumed control of the affairs "of the establishment of Illinois and the dependencies belonging to his Catholic Majesty,"' under orders of O'Reilly he caused a census to be taken, and accord- ing to this enumeration the population of all the Illinois country, west of the Mississippi river, then did not exceed 891-distributed in the various small settlements.63 And a large number of these settlers
Pedro Piernas
had only recently crossed into the Spanish territory. How small, then, must have been the population on the west side of the river prior to 1762! In 1772 the total population had increased to 1288, of which 803 were whites and.485 slaves. St. Louis then had a population of 399 whites of both sexes, and 198 slaves.
All the official papers executed from the year 1768 to the 20th of May, 1770, were delivered to Piernas by Labusciere, and also the "Register of the Concessions of Land and Lots in the village of St. Louis." After the survey of the village of St. Louis to fix the bounda- ries of the lots, Piernas expressly confirmed all grants of lots made by St. Ange, and continued to make other grants until April 24, 1775, when he was superseded by Don Francesco Cruzat. Piernas was a "man of dignity," and this, so it is said," made him distasteful to the Indians."64 Shepard says that he was an officer of "kind and liberal
83 Gayarre's History of Louisiana, vol. I, p. 355.
64 It is said that on account of his dignified manner an Osage chief took offense, "mistaking his reserve, so different from the affability of the French, as evidence of personal dislike", and resolved to kill him in revenge for a fan- cied insult, but while intoxicated betrayed his murderous secret to a Shawnee Indian, who prevented the assassination by slaying the intended assassin. (I Scharff's History of St. Louis, p. 202.) And Mr. Shepard says that the Shawnee was a chief and came to treat for some lands in the rear of Ste. Genevieve. But if this story depends on the Shawnee chief, it is manifestly a fiction, because the Shawnees did not come into the Spanish possessions until afterward. (Shep-
30
HISTORY OF MISSOURI
disposition," and conducted affairs "with that wisdom and prudence which seldom failed to make both the governor and the governed happy." 65 It was also remarked that, after the arrival of Piernas, the town or settlement of St. Louis did not increase in population as rapidly as during the first few years of the establishment of the village, the French residents on the east side of the river evidently having recovered from their first fear of the English and English government.66 During the administration of Piernas in 1774, the first village prison was constructed, a small stone structure fifteen by twenty, built against one of the gable ends of the stone house built by Laclede, and in which the governor resided. The cost of this prison was $165.67
Piernas was succeeded by Don Francesco Cruzat, a lieutenant- colonel of the stationary regiment of Louisiana. We are told that he was a mild and agreeable gentleman, who conducted the adminis- tration so quietly "in the healthful channels of his predecessor" that he was considered a man of very ordinary capacity then, but whom " the good and the wise will always desire to praise and imitate, as he made all about him happy, contented and prosperous. "68 It was during this period that the traders of the town began to evade "the oppressive imposts by systematic smuggling," that is to say, imported
ard's History of St. Louis, p. 21.) The statement of Shepard that "The Shawnees and Delawares were assigned lands at that time near Ste. Genevieve, and built villages on them, and cultivated them while the Spanish laws remained in force in the territory," (Shepard's History of St. Louis, p. 22), and during the admin- istration of Piernas, is based upon misapprehension.
65 According to the Spanish law his successor, Cruzat, obtained a certificate from the citizens of St. Louis in May, 1775, that they had received justice from Piernas, that he treated them well and paid his debts, and this certificate was signed by fifty of the leading habitans. But before he came to St. Louis, in a memorial of the French insurgents of lower Louisiana, addressed to the Superior Council, Piernas is charged with having impressed two rowers (voyageurs) from a French boat coming down the river at the Ecores à Margot, Piernas then being accompanied by one Chouriac, the Spanish store-keeper and commissary of the Illinois country, and that he threatened to fire on the boat with a swivel gun if he was not obeyed, and to put the men in chains; that he refused to stipulate for wages, but that Chouriac told them they must go to work for the King without further discussion, (Gayarre's History of Louisiana, vol. 1, p. 241), and again these petitioners say, that when Piernas was Spanish commander at Natchez, he compelled Chanard's boat going to the Illinois country to turn over provisions to him, having a piece of artillery loaded to compel compliance with his demand .
66 I Billon's Annals of St. Louis, p. 124.
67 It is interesting to know that Antoine Roussel dit Sans Souci did the stone work, François Delin the carpenter work, that Guion and Labbe furnished the iron work, and Joseph Mainville dit Deschenes the lime for this primitive jail. A François Rousel was a "soldat de la compagnie de Grandpré " at Fort de Chartres in 1745. This Rousel was a native of Franche Compte and no doubt related to the stone mason.
89 Shepard's History of St. Louis, p. 22.
31
CRUZAT
goods without paying legal duty. Cruzat, it seems, did not stop this illegal traffic. Under such circumstances, his popularity is well accounted for; and "his genial fellowship," the historians tell us, in strains of panegyric, "endeared him to the people fond of social enjoyment," and it might be added, dealing in "contraband goods," thus adding much "to their commercial profits." Under his adminis- tration a ferry was established across the Maramec by Jean Baptiste Gamache, facilitating intercourse between the mining districts and Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis. Both Piernas and Cruzat resided in a
Gran Crurates®
house on the corner of what is now Main and Walnut streets, and Shepard says that it "was the seat of hospitality and high school of fashion during both their administrations." 69 During Cruzat's administration, we note the "unaccountable disappearance" of the parish priest, Father Valentine,70 and who in 1775 had inaugurated the construction of the first church. Pierre Lupien dit Baron, the carpenter, was the contractor, and died during the progress of the work, in 1775, and Jean Cambas completed the building in 1776.
At this time, and long afterward, the great and constantly recur- ring trouble was the inadequate circulating medium. The merchants and people had large quantities of furs but little actual money, and were ready and could pay in furs, but not in actual silver dollars, and this caused frequent controversies. Thus, one Etienne Barré, a boat owner, brought six barrels of rum and some dry goods for Benito Vasquez, from New Orleans to St. Louis, delivered to him by one Roy, the freight being $25 on each barrel of rum, but instead of pay- ing the freight "in dollars," as contracted, Vasquez proposed to pay in peltries, which Barrérefused to accept, because he says he was "obliged to pay his outfit and expenses in dollars," and accordingly he appealed to Cruzat for justice and to compel said Vasquez "to pay him as per agreement." It was such troubles as this that caused the merchants of St. Louis to appeal to Cruzat to make rules for the inspection of furs and peltries, and weighing same, and Cruzat accordingly made such a
69 Shepard's History of St. Louis, p. 72.
70 I Billon's Annals of St. Louis, p. 131.
32
HISTORY OF MISSOURI
decree in March, 1776. During the administration of Cruzat a system to fortify St. Louis was first considered, but before actual work was begun he was superseded by Don Fernando de Leyba, in July, 1778.71
De Leyba was, for some reason, not popular with the people of the village, and is said to have been "singularly deficient in the qual- ities which command political success-devoid of tact and discretion, rabidly penurious and intemperate." By Shepard he is characterized as a "drunken, voracious and feeble-minded man, without a single redeeming qualification.'' 72 But these sweeping assertions seem in no wise sustained by proof. It may be that De Leyba strictly enforced the Spanish trade regulations and tariff, which Cruzat quietly ignored, and that this may have been the cause of his alleged unpopularity. Naturally, the traders who were illegally bringing English goods into the Spanish possessions would feel aggrieved, in a case of this kind. It is admitted that on his arrival at St. Louis, De Leyba immediately
sought to make provision for the protection of the village. He caused a stockade to be erected,73 and the work on the northwest bastion and northeast demilunes was commenced. The stockade was simply a straight line of pickets firmly set in the ground and bound together near the top by sapling switches; but whatever the character of the stockade, it evidenced that he was not unmindful of the duties devolv- ing upon him as lieutenant governor and commander of the country.
During the administration of De Leyba, Laclede died, June 20, 1778, aged fifty-four years, at Arkansas Post, on his way from New Orleans to the village he had founded. He was buried in the wilder- ness there. Hardly anything is known about him personally. That
71 Fernando de Leyba was a native of Barcelona, Spain; and was a Captain in the Stationary Regiment of Louisiana. In September, 1779, his wife died and was buried in the church "in front of the right hand ballustrade," and in June, 1780, Don Fernando de Leyba was buried by her side in the same church. M. de Liboa, Colonel of Infantry in command of a corps of grenadiers under O'Reilly in 1769, at New Orleans, may have been a relative. (Bossu's Nou- veaux Voyages, p. 20.)
12 Shepard's History of St. Louis, p. 22.
73 So stated in Scharff's History of St. Louis, vol. I, p. 138. But Chouteau himself says, "In regard to the line of fortification, I only traced it in 1780, by or- der of the government." What he means by "traced" he does not explain.
33
LACLEDE'S DEATH
he was a man of enterprise, of courage, of resolution and tenacity of purpose is certain ; that he was far-seeing and not devoid of imagina- tion is shown in the selection he made of the site where is now located his great city, and whose glory and magnificence he could even then see in the dim future. The fact alone that he, of all the Frenchmen locating trading posts at that early day in the Mississippi valley, did select, not by chance but evidently upon mature consideration, a location for a great city, which has been ratified by all men since as eminently wise impresses upon us his great intellectual fore- thought. That he was full of energy is shown by his frequent journeys to New Orleans; for it was then no easy task for travelers to go a thousand miles up and down a great and lonely river, enduring every privation, beset by every danger. That he also traveled through the interior of our state; that the paddles of his canoe dipped the waters of the Missouri, the Osage, the Gasconade, and even the Platte, we feel certain. That he was a man of liberal spirit is shown by the fact that, without hesitation, he invited his countrymen to his own trading post, when they became agitated about the cession of the country east of the Mississippi to England, thus bringing competitors to his own door. That when an emergency arose he was capable of decided original action, is shown by the fact that, although his firm only had a concession to trade with the Indians, and no land grant, he never- theless assigned to all new immigrants landed locations, exercising a power not delegated or granted, and at that period, both under French and Spanish rule, requiring more than ordinary self-reliance. That he was wise is shown by the fact that he induced St. Ange to remove the seat of his government from Fort de Chartres to his trading post rather than to Ste. Genevieve, the nearest, oldest and most im- portant settlement on the west side of the river, and then caused St. Ange to expressly grant the lots assigned by him to the first settlers, opening a record of land grants, and in this way placing on a firm basis his work. All these characteristics we can infer from what he did, but no more. In personal appearance he is said to have been about five feet eleven inches high, and to have had a "very dark olive com- plexion, a broad forehead, a prominent nose, and penetrating, black and expressive eyes." 74 The spot where he is buried is unknown, and no stone marks his grave; but the great city which has grown up where he so wisely established his trading post is his monument.
Shortly after the death of Laclede, Spain and England became 74 Prof. Waterhouse in Scharff's History of St. Louis, p. 204.
34
HISTORY OF MISSOURI
involved in war, and on June 16, 1779, King George III. advised Parliament that Spain had resorted to arms. About this time the inhabitants of the village became alarmed byrumors of Indian attacks. It has been suggested that the report of the outbreak of hostilities could not have reached a remote post in the wilderness like St. Louis as early as March, 1780, and that the British officers could not have organized an expedition before the close of the winter of 1779, and hence that it may well be doubted that any such uneasiness existed in the village. In support of this view it is said that Charles Gratiot, a merchant of Cahokia, in March, 1780, sent a barge loaded with goods and provisions to Prairie du Chien for the purpose of trade, and that this barge was captured and pillaged by the British and Indians, and that he afterward testified, in 1780, that he was absolutely ignorant of the declaration of war. But it should be remembered that his boatmen, in a suit brought before Governor Cruzat for wages, in 1781, charged collu- sion on the part of Gratiot with the public enemy. The captain of the boat was John B. Cardinal. The crew, consisting of Peter Lafleur, John Durand, François Chevalier, Louis La Marche and J. A. Matthews, apparently an early English or American settler, were plaintiffs except La Marche and Matthews. In their petition the boatmen aver that the pillage of the barge supplied the Indians with the provisions and ammunition without which it would have been impossible to have reached or attacked St. Louis,75 and that these same Indians afterward did attack St. Louis was fully established in this suit. In all things except as to the charge of collusion with the enemy, the statement of facts, as made by the plaintiffs, was confirmed rather than controverted by the other witnesses.76 It is very strange that in March, 1780, a man of the intelligence of Gratiot should not have heard that in June previous war had been declared, and hostilities had actually broken out between the Spaniards and the English, in Sep- tember previous, in Florida. It is true, news traveled slow in those days, but hardly as slow as that, from New Orleans to Kaskaskia, Cahokia or St. Louis.77
75 Scharff's History of St. Louis, p. 207.
16 I Scharff's History of St. Louis, p. 207.
77 But Gratiot as a merchant of Cahokia, in 1780, certainly was not ignorant of the fact that war prevailed between England and the United Colonies at that time. How can his attitude viewed from that standpoint be explained? By the people of Cahokia (Cahos) in May, 1780, he was solicited to ask the pro- tection of Colonel Clark "contre les incursions des sauvages dont on etoit men- ace" (1 Scharff's History of St. Louis, p. 205, note 3), and yet in March of that
35
1254228 ST. LOUIS ATTACKED
Governor Reynolds says that an expedition was planned by the British authorities at Mackinaw to recapture Cahokia, but from the Haldimand papers it appears that not only the recapture of Cahokia but also St. Louis and other Spanish posts on the west side of the river was planned.78 Reynolds connects with this attack on St. Louis one Dominique Ducharme,79 a Canadian, who was engaged illegally in the Indian trade on the upper Missouri, somewhere near Loutre island, in the Spanish possessions, and whose goods were accordingly seized and confiscated by the authorities, and who personally barely escaped with his life.80 He supposes that, out of revenge, this Ducharme diverted the expedition against Cahokia to the Spanish settlement on the west side of the river. Concerning this Ducharme incident, which occurred at least eight years before the attack on St. Louis, Captain Vattas writes to General Haldimand, June 16, 1773, from Michilimackinac as follows: "One Ducharme, a trader, has been plundered in the course of the winter by one Lasaide (Laclede), who follows some business on the Spanish side. This Ducharme went, I believe, beyond our limits, and was served so in consequence of it, by order of Mr. Purenasse (Piernas), the Spanish commandant of Missouri. The Spaniards, I'm told, want much to engross all the trade with the Sax's (Saukees), and prevailed on them very lately against the Osages, with whom they had since engaged; that fifteen of the former had been killed on the spot and the rest had fled much "dissatisfied"' with the expedition.'' 81
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