History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men, Part 131

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts
Number of Pages: 1358

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The breach widened, the bitter feelings deepened and intensified, and when at last the coalition secured control of the city government, there was almost prac- tical non-intercourse between the two elements. Po- litical violence culminated in physical violence and civil war, and during four bitter years there was almost an entire suspension of all intellectual action and growth, all energies concentrated upon doing and feeling, all brain and nerve-force directed to the one end of co-operation with muscular force.

But it was only a suspension, not a paralysis of in- tellectual power, and when the war ended and all the new and fully-developed energies of the community were turned back into the old normal and peaceful channels, a new epoch was found to be inaugurated,- that of the present,-one of the strongest elements of which was an energetic and virile mental vigor which demanded and even clamored for expression. It may not have cried always articulately at first, but there can be no mistake about its crying loudly. This cpoch has been characterized by a vast and remark- able material and financial development in St. Louis, splendid rivalries, grand conquests over time and space, far-reaching connections, and ambitious international alliances. Intellectual growth and expansion have attempted to keep pace with this great material

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HISTORY OF SAINT LOUIS.

growth and expansion, and thought, despising the old grooves and refusing to work in the used, familiar traccs, has tried to shake itself free from tradition and leap at once upon the new plane of absolute originality. This we believe to be a fair presentation of what is sometimes called the "St. Louis move- ment," an attempt, naturally not always successful, to give the schools the go-by, and ally the thinking classes of St. Louis with the most radical opinion- founders of New England and Germany. The attempt is entirely sincerc and earnest in its purposes and honestly original in its methods, and nothing but good can finally come out of it, though in its present stages it is hampered by crudities and too much absorbed in self-contemplation. But of this more presently.

We have preferred rapidly to sketch the outline of this literary progress of St. Louis before descending to the details. Let us now go back and glance at some of the writers whose names can be fairly mentioned in connection with the second period,-that of mate- rial growth and of the sweat and toil of building up the city. Neither the names nor the written works are very numerous,-people had no time to spare. Yet in this period the St. Louis University and the Washington University were founded, the Historical Society and the Mercantile Library and the Academy of Science. The public school system was wrought out upon a definite and comprehensive plan, and all the germs planted which are now beginning to show such an orderly and stately growth. Of authors proper, the name of Timothy Flint must always be associated with that early tide of immigration from the East, of which he was a pioneer and the earliest chronicler. Born and reared in Massachusetts, his Missouri residence was St. Charles, and yet all he wrote from the West was imbued with the true St. Louis local flavor. He and the Rev. Dr. J. M. Peck were St. Louisan authors by the law of natural selec- tion, just as Drake and Hall were Cincinnatians. Hall lived at Shawncetown, and wrote most pleasantly of old and new Illinois, but Cincinnati was the hub of his thought, and so Timothy Flint's and John Mason Peck's cargoes of fact and fancy all broke bulk at St. Louis. Peck lived at Rock Spring, Ill., but St. Louis was his centre, and his best work was done for St. Louis journals.

The place was so active and energetic, so entirely honest and naïve in those early days, that it had a great attraction for fresh minds bent upon frank and free inquiry. All Illinois at that time was just " over the river," and Kaskaskia, Belleville, Edwardsville, Alton were tributary to St. Louis. Robert Owen used to come here to escape from the stagnant pessi-

mism of his impossible perfection at New Harmony, and here he and Madame D'Arusmont (Fanny Wright) used to lecture and have seances, at which the most advanced radicalism was disseminated without hurting any one or even disturbing the general good humor, any more than if rose-water had been sprayed abroad upon the tolerant air. Here, too, Governors Tom Ford and Tom Reynolds and Ninian Edwards used to come, in search of breezes that the flat prairie did not afford. St. Louis was vacation to them after Illinois. John James Audubon used to stroll in too, when he could escape from Louisville, or had time to come out of the woods long enough to gaze and see what civili- zation looked like. There was a magic charm about the town, and it has not even yet been civilized out of that charm. It abounded in original characters, such as the active mind delights to study. It was here that " Mark Twain" picked up his Col. Sellers, in " The Gilded Age," and gave immortality to John T. Raymond. Sellers was a steamboat captain, and " Twain" probably clerked for him. Mrs. Farnham here got the characters for her speaking portraits of emigrant life, and Mrs. C. M. Kirkland also picked up some of the fioriture which she needed to embellish her comic pictures from the Michigan flats.

Frederic L. Billon has recorded the fact that he had no sooner arrived here in 1818, with his father, than he began to think of getting materials together for a portrait of the picturesque old town, and he has been employed upon that labor of love ever since, giving to it all the antiquarian's patient research, until he is almost as familiar with the ancient population as he was with his own contemporaries, and far more so than with the present generation. We look upon Mr. Billon's work as almost unique of its kind, and it is so positively un-American. Who else in all this land has done, or attempted to do, such work, except Peter Force, of Washington, D. C .? It must be in his blood,-the patient, careful devotion to minute, microscopic detail of the hereditary Swiss watch- maker,-for while Mr. Billon's mother was French, and a refugee from insurgent San Domingo, his father was Swiss, and a watch-maker, though born in Paris.

Mr. Billon was born in the city of Philadelphia, at the southeast corner of Third and Chestnut Streets, on Thursday, April 23, 1801. He lived in and about that locality, then the business centre of the city, for more than seventeen years. During his youth he went to school for some seven or eight years to Peter Wid- dows, an Irish gentleman of thorough education, a Free Quaker, who taught his school in Church Alley, adjoining Christ Episcopal Church, and just opposite

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to another school, under the charge of Capt. Talbot Hamilton, formerly of the British navy, who had served with Nelson in the Mediterranean. At that day there were but few schools in the large cities of the United States taught by Americans, the popular belief then prevalent among all classes being that thorough information could only be obtained from those of foreign birth.

When a school-boy he cared little for such sports as marbles, tops, kites, and balls, etc., but delighted in athletic recreations, such as running and jumping, swimming, skating, rowing, or any amusement that required activity of body or limbs, long walks, etc. During his boyhood he was frequently indulged in holidays, and made many excursions into the country adjacent to the city in all directions, even to the adjoining counties, from which he became familiar with the surroundings of Philadelphia in alınost every direction to the distance of some thirty or forty miles from the city.

During the progress of the war with England in 1812-15, he spent many evenings at home, reading to his father, an indifferent English scholar, from the papers of the passing occurrences of the day. When, in 1814, the British took Washington, and attempted the capture of Baltimore by their attacks on North Point and Fort McHenry, and ascended Chesapeake Bay to its head, although but a lad of fourteen ycars, he was one of those detailed by the authorities of Phil- adelphia to work on the fortifications erected south- west of the city, below Gray's Ferry, on the Baltimore turnpike-road, and was on several occasions a visitor at the encampments of volunteers at Kennett Square, Chester Co .; at Camp Dupont, on the Brandywine ; and at Marcus Hook, Delaware Co., where some ten thousand men were concentrated.

Leaving school upon the conclusion of the war, in 1815, at the age of fourtcen years, he assisted in his father's business, that of an importer of watches and clocks from his native country, Switzerland, and on the occasion of his father's last visit to his native placc, in the summer of 1815, following the battle of Waterloo and the second abdication of the first Na- poleon, he was left in sole charge of his father's busi- ness during his absence of some six or eight months in Europe, as also during his father's frequent business trips to New York, and south as far as Charleston, S. C.

In the summer of the year 1818, business being completely prostrated in all the principal cities at the East, and many turning their attention to the " Far West" beyond the Mississippi, his father, with nine children to set afloat in the world, falling in with the

popular sentiment of the day, concluded to abandon the city with which he had been identified for ncarly a quarter of a century and seek a new home for his infant colony in the West beyond the "Father of Waters."

Accordingly, on the morning of Sunday, Aug. 30, 1818, accompanied by lis oldest son, the subject of

FREDERIC L. BILLON.

this sketch, then a young man in his cighteenth year, they left Philadelphia in the mail-stage for Pittsburgh, three hundred miles, which place they reached on Friday, September 4th, in six days. From this point they descended the Ohio in a keel-boat, reaching Shaw- nectown, one thousand miles from Pittsburgh, about the middle of October. Thence they proceeded by land through Illinois to Kaskaskia, crossing the Mis- sissippi to Ste. Genevieve in a canoe, and thence to St. Louis, which .point they reached on Wednesday, October 28th, having consumed just sixty days on the route, about the usual time required for the trip at that day.

After spending the winter of 1818-19 in the place selected for their future domicile, and purchasing the old stone mansion of the Labadies, at the northeast corner of Main and Chestnut Streets, for the reception of his family when he should arrive with them in the ensuing fall, his father set out on his return to Philadelphia on horseback in April, 1819, leaving Frederic in charge of his business, and to attend to the alterations and improvements necessary to make his purchase habitable. He reached Philadelphia in

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HISTORY OF SAINT LOUIS.

May, remained there a couple of months, and left with his family in July, arriving in St. Louis in September. The family were domiciled in their new home at the close of the month.

The summer of 1819 was a noted one.in the annals of St. Louis, for, notwithstanding the great sickness and mortality of that particular year, in the shape of bilious and intermittent fevers, which prevailed to a great extent throughout the settlements on the Western waters, it was the year of extensive military operations on the part of the United States in extend- ing their outposts far beyond their former limits, the old frontier post at Bellefontaine, on the Missouri. Maj. Stephen H. Long's scientific expedition to the Yellowstone in the " Western Engineer ;" Col. Henry Atkinson's ascent of the Missouri with the Sixth Regiment United States Infantry, to establish Fort Atkinson, Council Bluffs ; Col. Josiah Snelling's ex- pedition with the Fifth Regiment to establish Fort Snelling at St. Peter's, and other movements of minor importance, requiring the use of numerous steamboats and paddle-wheel barges, of which a number were lost in the Missouri, are vividly impressed upon the memory of Mr. Billon, that being his first summer in the then remote West.

Late in the year 1819 the first " uniformed" com- pany of volunteer infantry west of the Mississippi, styled the "St. Louis Guards," was raised in St. Louis, of which Mr. Billon became a member in the following year, and in 1824 received his commission as ensign of the same from Gen. William H. Ashley, Lieutenant-Governor.

In 1820 he witnessed the excitements attending the adoption of the State Constitution and the estab- lishment of the State government. In September, 1822, his father, Charles F. Billon, Sr., died, leaving the charge of his widow and children to his oldest son, F. L. Billon, who had just attained his majority.

His first vote was cast for the acceptance of the city charter in February, 1822, from which date he has been a voter at every city and State election down to the present day, as also at every Presidential elec- tion in the State from the first in 1824, and was an eye-witness and participant in many interesting events and occurrences connected with the town, city, and State governments in that early period of St. Louis' history.

In the year 1827, while absent on business in Phil- adelphia, he was elected an alderman from the central ward of the three into which the city was then di- vided, and in 1828 was re-elected to the same posi- tion.

On May 20, 1829, his brothers and sisters being

mostly grown to maturity and disposed of, he him- sclf entered the married state with Miss E. L. Gen- erelly, like himself a native of Philadelphia of French parentage. With this lady he passed thirty-six years of wedded life until her death, Feb. 4, 1865. He was the father of twelve children, but three of whom survive.

In the year 1834, his health being materially im- paired by his constant devotion to business, he, by the advice of his physician, the late Dr. William Carr Lanc, made a trip to Santa Fé and the Rocky Moun- tains, then not a trifling undertaking, requiring some ninety to one hundred days in crossing the plains with wagons and ox-teams, and returned in the fall much improved in health.

In 1851-52 he was twice nominated by Mayor Luther M. Kennett to the position of city comptroller, and on each occasion unanimously confirmed by the board.

In 1853 he was appointed the first auditor and general book-keeper of the Missouri Pacific Railroad, filling the position for five years, and tlicn succeeded, in 1858, to that of secretary aud treasurer of the same company, resigning the office at the close of the year 1863, after some eleven years in the service of the company. Since that period he has devoted much time to literary matters, more particularly to the task of gathering up the data and materials for an early history of the country bordering the Missis- sippi in its entire course, in the pursuit of which he is still occupied at the age of eighty-two years. .

Lewis C. Beck came to St. Louis in 1820 from Albany, N. Y., looked around him and took notes, and then returning, published in 1823 the first gazetteer of the State, and the pioneer of many other publica- tions of this hard-working compiler. Senator Ben- ton, besides his self-drill in his library and that of Congress, had a practical training as editor before he began to write that " Thirty Years' View," that pon- derous royal octavo, of the first volume of which sixty- five thousand copies were sold almost on the day of publication. He used to write the notices of his own spceches, but besides that he was an editor in his own person.

Sergeant Hall, lawyer, came from Cincinnati early in 1817, and assumed charge of the paper gotten up two years previously in opposition to Charless' Missouri Gazette, the first number of which had been issued by Joshua Norvell, from Nashville, Tenn., in May, 1815, under the title of the Western Journal. Hall issued his first number on May 17, 1817, under the title of the Western Emigrant, and two years later still, in the summer of 1819, it was again changed to the St. Louis

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CULTURE AND LITERARY GROWTH IN SAINT LOUIS.

Inquirer, under the management of Col. Thomas H. Benton. After the charge of the paper passed from Mr. Hall he returned to Cincinnati.

Edmund Flagg, born in Wicasset, Me., can show one of the most industrious and reputable literary careers in the country. Graduating at Bowdoin Col- lege in 1835, he removed to St. Louis and established a school, but subsequently studied law in the office of Hon. Harrison Gamble, and in 1837 was admitted to the bar. Throughout this period he wrote for the Republican, and at the request of A. B. Chambers made a stenographic report of the speech of Daniel Webster, delivered at a barbecue in Lucas Grove in 1837. He also wrote an ode which was sung at the Fourth of July celebration of that year. The "New Year's Address" of the Republican carriers for 1838 was written by Mr. Flagg, and in the same year a series of articles on Western life and scenery, which he had contributed to the Republican, were compiled and published by the Harpers, of New York, in two vol- umes, under the title of " The Far West, or a Tour Beyond the Mountains."

During 1838, Mr. Flagg became associated with Col. S. B. Churchill in the editorial management of the St. Louis Bulletin. Subsequently he cdited the News-Letter, published by George D. Prentice, at the office of the Louisville Journal, in 1840; the Whig, published at Vicksburg, where he was severely wounded in a duel with Dr. James Hagan, editor of the Sentinel, the Gazette at Marietta, Ohio, and the Evening Gazette at St. Louis. While at Marietta, in addition to the discharge of his editorial duties, he wrote a series of " Tales" and political papers for the New York New World, published by Park Benjamin, in 1842 and 1843. After his removal to St. Louis he became agent of the Home Mutual Insurance Company, and in 1845 was appointed reporter for the State Constitutional Convention of Missouri. During all this time (subsequent to the termination of his connection with the Evening Gazette) he con- tinued to contribute articles to the Republican. In 1847 he was appointed official reporter of the courts of St. Louis, and afterwards wrote several plays, one of which, " Mary Tudor," was adapted to the stage for Mrs. Farren, and was produced by Sol Smith at New Orleans and elsewhere with marked success.

In the spring of 1848, in conjunction with Pierre C. Grace, he wrote the address for a mass-meeting of the citizens of St. Louis to the revolutionists of Europe, and about the same time produced the " Howard Queen," a prize tale for the St. Louis Union. Soon after this he went abroad as secretary to Hon. Edward A. Hannegan, minister to Berlin.

During his stay at Berlin he corresponded for New York papers, and wrote a sequel, entitled “ Edmond Dantes," to Dumas' novel "Monte Christo." In 1850 he wrote a prize tale for the Louisville Courier. For this and an address for the opening of Bates' new theatre and the amphitheatre he received three prizes in one month, aggregating three hundred dol- lars. In 1851 he was appointed consul to Venice, and on his return became the editor of the St. Louis Times. During this year (1853) he wrote " Venice, the City of the Sea," which was published by Scrib- ner, of New York, in two finely illustrated volumes, and in the following year furnished a series of articles for Myers' " United States Illustrated." About this time he was appointed superintendent of statistics in the State Department by Secretary Marcy, and while occupying that position prepared four quarto volumes on the commercial relations of the United States. In 1860 he resigned his position, and became the Wash- ington correspondent of the New York Tribune, Louisville Journal, and St. Louis Democrat. He was afterwards appointed librarian of copyrights in the Interior Department, and on the transfer of the collection to the Congressional Library retired to private life. Mr. Flagg wrote the novels " Carraro, the Prime Minister," "Francis of Valois," " The Howard Queen," " Blanche of Artois," and several other romances and plays, all in print.

James D. Nourse, who, while editor of the St. Louis Intelligencer, died of cholera, in 1854, was an author of prominence and a contributor to many periodicals. He was born in Bardstown, Ky., in 1816, studied both law and medicine, and had a wide and varicd editorial experience. His two novels, "The Forest Knight" and " Leavenworth," have both been praised by Dr. R. W. Griswold for their accuracy and spirit in the delineation of Western life; his " Philosophy of History" won the commendation of so fastidious a critic as H. T. Tuckerman, and Horace Binney Wallace found weighty and original thinking in his last work, " Remarks on the Past, and its Relations to American Society, or God in History."

Another of the newspaper literati of St. Louis was John S. Robb (the " Solitaire" of the St. Louis Reveille and of the New Orleans Picayune), the humorist, who, in conjunction with Madison Tensas, wrote " The Swamp Doctor," a book famous in its day, and which still holds its own with Drake's " Mike Fink," Thorpe's " Tom Owen, the Bee-Hunter," and Hoop- er's " Simon Suggs." Charles D. Drake, by the way, was a St. Louis editor himself, besides being one of the original founders of the St. Louis Law Library. The brothers, Joseph M. and M. C. Field, were prominent

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writers for the brilliant Reveille, of which Joseph was one of the editors. Both were poets of no common order, and their verses had a very wide circulation. There was a certain mingled grace and fire in their timbre which was exceedingly attractive. Joseph Field was one of the favorite writers of the New Orleans Picayune, in which his well-known nom de plume was "Straws." He was a dramatic writer of skill, and many of his plays were successful upon the boards. He was very fond of the theatre, and was, indeed, the first manager of the old " Varieties." I was through him that Solomon Franklin ("Sol") Smith first came to write for the press and became a regular contributor to the Reveille.

John Hogan (Rev.) used to be one of the best- known and most useful writers for the press in St. Louis. He was a native of Ireland, born in 1805, and came to this country in 1817, making his first home in Baltimore, where he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. He taught himself to read by spelling over the columns of the old Federal Gazette, and so may be said to have taken naturally to newspapers. When he grew up he became an itinerant Methodist preacher, and drifted westward to the Illinois Confer- ence. After engaging in business in Edwardsville and Alton, he removed to St. Louis in 1845, clerked, was in the grocery business, and then insurance agent. He began at this time to write those studied and thoughtful papers on the resources of St. Louis which attracted such attention and did the business interests of the town so much good. The merchants presented him with a testimonial service of silver, and his political friends secured for him from Mr. Buchanan the appointment of postmaster. Mr. Ho- gan's " History of Methodism in the West" is a careful and useful compilation, prepared in his customary painstaking way.

The history of the press of St. Louis is given so fully and completely in another place that, to avoid repetition here; we are able to say but little concern- ing the writers who have contributed to its re- sources. Joseph Charless, the founder of the Gazette, not content with being a simple editor, with patient toil and study, sought to grasp at his ideal of literary excellence in scholarship and style. His successor, Nathaniel Paschall, had the same thirst for letters, and studied as patiently to excel. No editor ever wielded the leading writer's pen for a longer time or to a better purpose than Mr. Paschall. He was a recognized force, an embodied influence in the com- munity, and always for the community's advantage and betterment, writing solid argument on the truth's side, for the truth's sake, and without abuse or per-

sonality. In this good work George Knapp has always been by his side,-a man, self-made, who deserved all his successes and prosperity.

Charles Keemle, born in Philadelphia in 1800, was as early as 1817 in charge of the St. Louis Emigrant, the second journal west of the Mississippi, afterwards merged in the Inquirer. Keemle's life bristled with adventure. He went to the Rocky Mountains as clerk to the American Fur Company before he had attained his majority, and fought a desperate battle on the Yellowstone fifteen years before Custer was born. He had half a dozen newspapers in St. Louis at different times, and filled many public offices. He, with J. M. Field and his brother, founded the Re- veille in 1845, and during the five years of its exist- ence it was undoubtedly the best literary paper in the West.

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History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men, Part 131

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898 Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts Number of Pages: 1358

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts
Number of Pages: 1358