USA > Missouri > Encyclopedia of the history of Missouri, a compendium of history and biography for ready reference, Vol. I > Part 106
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appointed a commission to regulate the public schools, he was one of the commis- sioners. He was a justice of the peace, a judge of the court of common pleas, and when the Bank of Missouri was organized, in 1817, he was made its first president. In the early days of the town his land extended from what is now Main Street back into the country, and for many years he kindly al- lowed the part nearest the town to be used as a general burying-ground for those who might not be buried in the Catholic Church cemetery. In 1825. Lafayette, who was then traveling over the United States, visited St. Louis. It was a great event in the history of the city, for, while the citizens of American lineage delighted to honor him as the friend of Washington and our ally in the Revolu- tion, the French citizens had an additional cause for rejoicing in the fact that he was a Frenchman. Colonel Chouteau was made a member of the committee on arrangements, and was one of the three citizens-Mayor William Carr Lane and Stephen Hempstead being the other two-who rode in the open barouche with Lafayette through the town to the mansion of Pierre Chouteau, where the formal reception took place. At the time of the cession, and for many years afterward, Colonel Auguste Chouteau lived in a spa- cious mansion on the west side of Main Street, between Market and Walnut, the place occupying the whole square. The house was built of stone, two stories with an attic and dormer window, and with three windows on each side of the main door in front. There was a wide piazza in front, ex- tending round the ends, giving to the man- sion that open and generous air which the free-handed hospitality of the proprietor fully bore out ; and it was here that many a dis- tinguished person, traveler, author, and ad- venturer, was entertained : and here, too, the public meetings were held during the times when there was no sufficiently spacious public building that could be used. The only portrait we have of Colonel Chouteau repre- sents a man about forty-five years of age, with oval face, smooth shaved after the fashion of that day, light brown hair, high, intelligent forehead, classic month, straight nose, and the general expression of the face quiet and grave.
Auguste Chouteau was married September 21, 1786, at the age of thirty-six years, to
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Marie Therese Cerre, daughter of Gabriel Cerre, a merchant of Kaskaskia. Ile died February 24, 1829, in his seventy-ninth year, and was buried in the Catholic Church celle- tery on Walnut Street, but his remains were afterward removed to Calvary cemetery, where they rest on the brow of the morning- sunlit hill overlooking the great river, on whose bank he founded his last monument, that will be the undying pride of generations vet to come. Upon the simple tablet is the epitaph : "Sa vie a ete un modèle de vertus civiles et sociales"-Flis life was a model without a stain.
Chouteau, Charles P., was born in St. Louis, December 2, 1819, and died there in 1901. He received his earlier education in the school of Mr. Savare. in St. Louis, and at eight years of age was sent to the Jesuit Seminary in the old town of St. Ferdinand, near the city, and six years later was sent to the civil and military school of the Peugnet Brothers, in New York, where he remained four years. All the elder Chouteaus were fur traders, because St. Louis was settled as a trading post, and fur trading of the old style was, for three-quarters of a century and more, the most profitable business with capi- tal that could be followed in the West. Mr. Chouteau's father. Pierre Chouteau, Jr., was perhaps, the most enterprising and successful of them all ; and in the carly part of his busi- mess life, Charles P. had an opportunity of see- ing what it was before it lost its ancient char- acter of romance and adventure, and was trained down to modern methods. In 1838 he was taken into his father's establishment, Chouteau & Mckenzie, and there received a part of the business training which prepared him for the long, prosperous and honorable career that followed. After four years' serv- ice in this connection, he spent a year in New York, and, after that, two years in Europe. He returned to St. Louis in 1845, and in No- vember of that year was married to Miss Julia Augusta Gratiot, younger of the two daughters of General Charles Gratiot, of the United States Army. He was continuously in business for over sixty years, and in that time he had much to do with the industrial development of St. Louis, particularly the iron interest, in which he was concerned after 1850.
Chouteau, Heury, upon whose shoulders iell the mantle of his illustrious father, Colonel Auguste Chouteau, was born February 11. 1805. in St. Louis, and died No- vember 1, 1855. He was the third son of Colonel Chouteau, who was eldest of the Chouteau family in St. Louis, stepson of La- clede, and his chief lieutenant in making the first settlement here. Henry Chouteau was educated at the Catholic College, which at the time stood on Second Street, near Walnut, and which was the first institution of the kind established west of the Mississippi River. In 1827, when he was only twenty-two years of age. he was appointed clerk of the county court and recorder of St. Louis County, po- sitions which he filled continuously until 1842, when he founded the mercantile house of Chouteau & Riley, not long afterward changed to Chouteau & Valle, which con- tinued to be up to the time of his death one of the staunchest and foremost mercantile houses of St. Louis. Mr. Chouteau married, July 10. 1827. Miss Clemence Coursault, of Baltimore. He was in the ill fated excursion on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, wrecked at the Gasconade Bridge, in 1855. and was one of the thirty persons killed in that disaster.
Choutean Island .- This island, which has cut some figure in the changes of Mis- sissippi River, was once larger than Cabaret Island. It was named after one of the elder Chouteaus. Its head was just below Madi- son, Illinois. It is now no more an island, having been joined to the mainland on the Illinois side by railroad improvements.
Chouteau, JJean Pierre, was born at New Orleans, Louisiana, October 10, 1758, and died in St. Louis, July 10. 1849. He was not of the party that landed at the foot of what is now Walnut Street, and made the first beginning of St. Louis, in February, 1764; he did not come to the settlement until the following September. He was only about six years of age at the time, too young to take any responsible part in the work of founding the trading post. But he grew up with it, for his whole life, with the exception of the visits he made to his own trading posts among the Indians, and to New Or- Jeans, Detroit and Montreal in connection with his business, was passed in St. Louis.
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He built a fort and established a trading post in what is now southeast Missouri, on the headwaters of the Osage-a district abound- ing in beaver and occupied by the Osage, Pawnee and Kansas Indians. He prosecuted the fur trade successfully for twenty-five years, withdrawing from it shortly after the transfer of Louisiana Territory to the United States, in 1804, and contenting himself with local business in St. Louis. He was held in high esteem by the American population that began to come in after the transfer. He was chosen a member of the Town Council and appointed United States sub-Indian agent for treating with the tribes whose confidence he had gained in his trading operations. Major Chouteau was twice married; first, to Miss Pelagie Kirsereau, July 26, 1783, who died ten years afterward, leaving four children; and next to Miss Brigitte Saucier, of Caho- kia, February 14, 1794, who died May 18, 1829, leaving four children.
Chouteau, Joseph Gilman, was born in St. Louis, December 2, 1836, son of Henry and Clemence G. (Coursault) Chou- teau. Mr. Chouteau is a grandson of Colonel Auguste Chouteau, who laid out the town of St. Louis under the direction of Pierre La- clede, and who was the chief citizen of the French settlement, which was the foundation of the city during the early years of its ex- istence. Born to a rich inheritance, he was educated at St. Louis University, and after devoting some time to travel and study abroad, he returned to St. Louis and engaged in the general commission business as head of the firm of Chouteau & Edwards. In the course of a few years the firm of which he was the head obtained control of a large Southern trade, which proved exceedingly re- munerative. At a later date he interested himself in the manufacture of flour, and for some years was the owner of the largest flouring mill in southern Illinois, located at the town of Waterloo, twenty miles distant · from St. Louis. Of this mill, which had a capacity of one thousand barrels per day, and which became famous for the excellence of its products, he was owner for twenty years, disposing of it finally in 1883. Since then he has been interested as an investor in various manufacturing enterprises, and in banking institutions as a director and stockholder. He has also been the administrator of sev-
eral large estates, and to trusts of this char- acter and his private business interests the larger share of his time and attention has been devoted in later years. A thoroughly educated and accomplished gentleman and the master of several languages, he has en- joyed to the fullest extent his extensive trav- els, and is a cosmopolitan in his manners and tastes. He devotes a share of his time to out- door sports, is an expert horseman, and a lover of the rod and gun. With his love of recreative amusements, however, he couples studious habits, and has always been deeply interested in the mechanical arts, having been the originator of several valuable inventions.
Chouteau, Pierre, son of Jean Pierre Chouteau, and grandson of Laclede, was born at St. Louis, January 19, 1789, and died there October 16, 1865. Although not so long-lived as his father, who died in 1849, at the age of ninety-one years, nor his uncle, Auguste Chouteau, who died in 1829, at the age of eighty-one years, nor his cousin, Gabriel Chouteau, who died in 1887, in his ninety-third year, he lived out of one century into the middle of another, and stands as a strong connecting figure between the old era and the new, between the fur-trading post of 1800 and the St. Louis of 1865, with its popu- lation of 200,000 and all the agencies and ac- cessories of a modern metropolis. He was known in his day as the prince of the fur traders. All the Chouteaus before him, and his son, Charles P. Chouteau, after him, were fur traders, and successful ones, too, but it was he who organized the business into a methodical and efficient system and extended its operations throughout the length and breadth of the vast unsettled West, increased the forts and stations, and established such confidential relations with the Indians that the United States government was glad to secure his assistance in its distribution of an- nuities and in other dealings with the tribes. He began his acquaintance with the trade at an early age, being only nineteen years old when he accompanied his father on a perilous expedition among the savages of the upper Missouri. After embarking in the business, as successor to hiis aged father, he stood for more than forty years the central directing figure of commercial enterprises and devel- opment in the regions of the upper Missis- sippi and Missouri Rivers. Mr. Chouteau's
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earlier partners in the fur trade, Bartholo- mew Berthold, Bernard Pratte, Sr., and John P. Cabanne, died in 1831, 1837 and 1841, re. spectively, and John Jacob Astor, of New York, withdrew from the western branch of the American Fur Company about the year 1834, leaving a portion of his funds, however, still under the management of his old friend. In 1842 the company was reorganized, Mr. Chouteau associating with himself John B. Sarpy, Joseph A. Sire and J. F. A. Sandford, and the house was thenceforth known as Pierre Chouteau, Jr., & Co. The headquar- ters of the old company had been for many years on the levee, in a rambling building constructed from the rock blasted for its cel- lars, but after the reorganization a larger and more commodious building was erected on Washington Avenue, near Main, and here this notable company busily fulfilled and finally closed its mission. It was for a time a rendezvous for strange characters-a meet- ing place for persons whom nothing but the fur trade could have brought together- hunters and trappers moving with the silent tread which they had learned in their life of perpetual danger in the far West; deputa- tions of gaudily clad and feathered Indians from the upper Missouri, who were attached to the fortunes of the company and some- times fond of showing their devotion by too frequent visits to the headquarters; robust, good-natured Canadians, just returned from an expedition, or waiting for the departure of one; gay and brisk French attendants and employes, engaged in unpacking or repacking the bales of furs ; visitors from New York, or New Orleans, or Montral, or from Europe, come to pay their respects to Mr. Chouteau and his partners ; with an occasional author. naturalist or traveler, come to ask of the lib- eral and courteous proprietors the privilege of accompanying the next expedition ; and the coming and going loiterers and depend- ents always found in the retinue of the pros- perous St. Louis traders. Mr. Chouteau was fond of active life, with a taste for adventure, and in his younger days would accompany the annual expeditions sent out with goods to be exchanged for furs-for he understood the importance of maintaining the friendship of the tribes among whom his posts were lo- cated, and also of keeping up personal rela- tions with the hunters and trappers in the service of the company ; and whenever the in-
terests of the fur trade seemed to require a visit to the distant posts he was ready to go. There were always dangers to be encoun- tered, but Mr. Chouteau possessed a courage which even the hunters and Indian fighters in the service of the company respected; and when it came to hardships, he was always ready to take his share of them with the others. Occasionally, too, he was called to the East and to Europe ; but he managed the extensive business of his company from St. Louis, and it was in the office of the com- pany that he was usually to be found, seated at his desk, conducting the important corre- spondence, examining the accounts, receiv- ing the visitors who came with letters of in- troduction, engaged in casy conversation with his partners, or passing through the factory examining the packs, with a pleasant word for every one whom he encountered. The books, voluminous correspondence and miscellaneous papers of the famous peltry house, together with those of the original Missouri Fur Company and the American Fur Company which preceded it, were for- tunately preserved after his death, and are still in the possession of his grandson and namesake, Pierre Chouteau. They are said to abound in curious and interesting facts of the pioneer times, their personages, customs and notable incidents ; and it is fortunate that they are in the keeping of a gentleman who is a worthy representative of this historic family and who takes the heartiest interest in the early history of St. Louis and the West. Pierre Chouteau, Jr., was a man of noble presence, erect, uncommonly tall. of a coun- tenance habitually grave and thoughtful in repose. but in conversation animated and cheerful. His manners were easy and affable. He had to do with the accomplished society of Eastern and European cities, with the army officers, authors, explorers and adven- turers with whom St. Louis was a starting point and returning point : and with Indian chiefs, trappers and Indian fighters-and he was equally at home with all-the liberal patron, the upright merchant, and the ac- complished man of the world. He was mar- ried to Emilie Gratiot, June 15, 1815, and had five children : Emilie, who married John F. Sandford ; Julie, who married William Maffitt : Charles P. Chouteau, still living in 1898; and Pierre Charles and Benjamin Wil- son Chouteau, who died in infancy.
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Chouteau, Pierre, was born at St. Louis, July 30, 1849, son of Charles P. and Julia Augusta (Gratiot) Chouteau. After re- ceiving a thorough education in St. Louis his tastes and talents inclined strongly to the mechanical arts, and with the object of developing and disciplining them and turn- ing them to active usefulness for the benefit of others he went to Europe and took the course in the Royal School of Arts, Mines and Manufactures, at Liege, Belgium. When he returned, in 1874, he contemplated engag- ing in civil engineering, for which he was well prepared, but his father needed his assistance in the management of his business properties. and he has never found the opportunity to devote himself exclusively to the vocation in which he delighted, and in which he would certainly have risen to eminence. As the father advanced in years his business de- volved chiefly upon the son, with the result of making Mr. Chouteau a very busy man of affairs. Nevertheless, he has found time to give some attention to the mechanical arts and to exhibit his mechanical genius in the invention of appliances and devices, whose merit is recognized and demonstrated in their general adoption. Mr. Chouteau's tastes and inclinations are not exclusively mechanical. They incline to literature and art, and lead him into other quiet fields, where he finds recreation after the exacting duties of his business. He is an accomplished writer and accurate critic, and there are few whose opin- ion of a work of art, whether it be edifice, painting, statue or literary composition, is as valuable as his. He has a fond affection for old things, old names and old places in and around the city founded by his ancestors, and where they have lived for nearly a hundred and forty years, and he could, with the pic- tures of old houses and objects in his posses- sion, almost reproduce the appearance of St. Louis as it was three-quarters of a century ago. He is an active member of the Missouri Historical Society, and has done more, prob- ably, than any one else to collect and pre- serve ancient documents, papers and books illustrating the early conditions and history of that city. He is a man of fortune, as his father and grandfather and great-grandfather were before him-for the Chouteaus are far- seeing, prudent men of business, who have usually commanded success, whether in trad- ing, manufacturing or investing-and his
purse is always ready to respond liberally to a cause that appeals to his sympathy for the distressed, or to any enterprise in behalf of the welfare of the city of which he has such good reason to be proud. November 27, 1882, Mr. Chouteau married Miss Lucille M. Chauvin, who comes, like himself, of one of the old French families of St. Louis.
Chouteau, Marie Therese Bour- geois, wife of the founder of St. Louis, and ancestress of a family which has been most prominently identified with the history of St. Louis from its beginning down to the present time, was born Marie Therese Bourgeois, in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1733, and died in St. Louis, August 14, 1814. Being left an orphan at an early age, she was placed in the Ursuline Convent, from which she married Auguste Rene Chouteau. This marriage did not prove congenial, and a separation was ef- fected ; she afterward married Laclede, with whom she came to St. Louis. She was un- questionably a woman of unusual sagacity and intelligence. During Laclede's lifetime, with Auguste, her eldest son, she controlled and directed his affairs at St. Louis during his frequent absences on trading expeditions, and after his death she continued to be en- gaged to a considerable extent in the fur trade, made extensive investments in real es- tate and acquired a great deal of property. That she was a woman of strong character is evidenced by the fact that she left a marked impress on the community in which she lived for fifty years, and in which she died, hon- ored and esteemed, at the age of eighty-one years. Her house was for three years the home of St. Ange de Bellerive, commandant of the post of St. Louis, and it was there that he died, after appointing his friend Laclede his executor.
Chrisman, George Lee, banker and presiding judge of the County Court of Jack- son County, Missouri, was born August 8, 1851, at Dover, Lafayette County, son of Honorable William Chrisman, one of the foremost lawyers of western Missouri, and one of the organizers and president of the Chrisman-Sawyer Banking Company of In- dependence, Missouri. George Lee Chris- man received his education under a number of able tutors, the first of whom was Profes- sor George S. Bryant, the well known in-
Yours Truly bh Chrisman
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structor at Independence. He then became a pupil of Professor Kemper, of Boonville. Missouri ; later attended William Jewell Col- lege, at Liberty, Missouri, and finished his education at Forest Hill Academy, Anchor- age, Kentucky, from which institution he was graduated in 1870. After leaving school he returned to Jackson County and began work on his father's farm, becoming a suc- cessful stock-raiser and a most competent judge of fine cattle and horses. In 1897, upon the death of his father, he was chosen vice president of the Chrisman-Sawyer Banking Company, a position filled by' him at this time. He was elected associate judge of the County Court of Jackson County, Missouri, in 1896, to represent the eastern district of the county. Judge Chrisman, during his first term, established a reputation for fairness, together with business-like conservatism, that gave him deserved rank with the best judges the county ever had. He was elected as a Democrat, but his actions in court were not biased for politics' sake. The people of the county were not slow to reward such service, and in 1898 Judge Chrisman was elected presiding judge of the court, an office which he has filled with eminent satisfaction to his constituents, including the people of Kansas City and those who reside in the country districts of the county. In December, 1899, Judge Chrisman became one of the owners of the "Kansas City Times," and he was made president of the company in charge of the publication of that paper. Under the new regime. Secretary of State Lesueur was given the editorial chair, and the paper found new favor among the people of the West. Judge Chrisman was a stockholder in the old First National Bank of Independence, and, up to the time of his official connection with the Chrisman-Sawyer Banking Company, was a stockholder and director in the Bank of Lee's Summit. He is a member of the Pres- byterian Church. He was married, in 1872, to Miss Lotta Duke, who died in 1808. In August, 1900. he married Mrs. Lutie Gates, nee Duke, a sister of his first wife. Active in political life, he is known as an advocate of purity in politics. His position in com- mercial circles, and his prominence in public matters, give him a place among the leading men of Jackson County and Missouri.
Chrisman, William, lawyer, banker and legislator, was born in 1822, in Fayette County, Kentucky, and died in 1897, at his home in Jackson County, Missouri. He was the son of Joseph and Eleanor (Soper) Chris- man. The mother came from a Maryland family, whose members settled in Fayette County, Kentucky, a short time previous to the arrival of the Chrismans. The father re- moved to Missouri after the birth of William. The latter attended school in Fayette County, Kentucky. Later he attended Georgetown College, and finished his education at Centre College, which was then one of the leading educational institutions of Kentucky. His graduation was in 1846, and he received the degree of bachelor of arts and master of arts. After leaving college he completed his legal studies, reading at Danville, Kentucky, and was admitted to the practice in 1847. May 10. 1848, he was united in marriage to Miss Lucy A. Lee, daughter of George Lee, of Danville, Kentucky. On the day of their wedding the young couple started for Mis- souri, and on arriving here they located at Independence. Mrs. Chrisman died in Feb- ruary, 1889, at El Paso, Texas. Grief- stricken by the death of his wife, Mr. Chris- man retired to the seclusion of his farm near Lee's Summit, Jackson County, and there passed the evening of life. He was engaged in the active practice of law from 1849 to 1871. in Jackson and adjoining counties. During a great portion of the time he was associated with Samuel L. Sawyer, a distin- guished lawyer, who made an honored name and reputation. Mr. Chrisman was a men :- ber of the Constitutional Convention of 1875, and as chairman of the legislative committee. appointed to issue an address to the people of Missouri concerning the proposed Consti- tution, he achieved a distinction that fixes his name in the most important historical records of the State. Together with Judge Sawver. his associate, he had a most important part in framing the Constitution adopted at that convention, and it may be truthfully said that much of the Constitution was accepted as it had been prepared by these two men. Mr. Chrisman was one of the organizers of the Independence Savings Institution, which be- came the Chrisman-Sawyer Banking Com- pany a few years later. lle was actively identified with the commercial interests of
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