History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men, Part 189

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

USA > Missouri > St Louis County > St Louis City > History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men > Part 189

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Carondelet, when incorporated as a borough town in 1832, had been a village for about sixty-five years from its first establishment by Delor de Treget in 1767, under its different appellations,-first of " Prai- rie Catalan," from one Louis Catalan ; afterwards, from about 1790, "Louisbourg ;" and finally, from 1794, " Carondelet," after the Baron de Carondelet, Gover- nor-General at New Orleans from that date.1 No survey establishing the lots and street lines had ever been made. Until then it was an appendage of St. Louis. In the Spanish days its head was a syndic or deputy of the commandant at St. Louis; it had no archives or records distinct from those of St. Louis, and whatever papers and documents relate in any manner to its affairs are intermingled with those of St. Louis.

The village was incorporated by the County Court of St. Louis County, Judge M. P. Leduc presiding, on Monday, Aug. 20, 1832, and its first ordinance, " regulating dram-shops," was approved Sept. 3, 1832, by John Eugene Leitensdorfer, chairman of

the board of trustees. The new town was surveyed for the first time by Laurentius M. Eiler, a deputy county surveyor, in November, 1832, and the first plat of the town was made by him, after which the cross streets were named by calling them after the let- ters of the alphabet, beginning with A at the north and V at the south end of the town. This plat and survey added to the old village five additional cross streets to the north end of the town, several south, and Third and Fourth to the west, being the east boundary line of the Spanish common field lots, and making the town about a mile and a half long, north and south, by a fourth of a mile wide,-four rows of blocks of twenty-three each, numbered from one to ninety-two, and twelve at the southeast corner on the river, lettered from A to M. The additional cross- streets at the north end of the town, A, B, C, and D, although laid down on the plat to extend to the river, were never opened east of the high-road between the same and the river, and were doubtless abandoned, as the land is occupied to this day with fine private residences, overlooking the country far and wide. The main road down the hill was in time graded to the head of the Main Street, and the roundabout descent by Second Strect abandoned.

In the course of subsequent years several additional surveys of out-lots north, west, and south from the common fields were made at various times, and finally the common south of the Des Peres was sub-divided and sold or leased.

Carondelet, after it had existed for some twenty years as a borough town, its population having largely increased and many new houses having been erected, a number of them of brick (the first of this descrip- tion in 1839), was incorporated by act of the Legisla- ture, approved March 1, 1851, and divided into three- wards, with a City Council of two members from each ward. James B. Walsh was the first mayor, and the first City Council assembled April 9, 1851. The names of the streets were changed from initials to full names in October, 1854. The act of incorpora- tion, extending the northern boundary to the com- mons of St. Louis and the southern to the mouth of the River des Peres, gave Carondelet a river-front on the Mississippi of nearly three miles in extent, now embraced in the corporate limits of the city of St. Louis.

The main road from St. Louis down the hill, rough- graded while a town, was greatly improved after its incorporation as a city, but since the extension of the city southwardly to the River des Peres, over more favorable ground, this old portion of the village is in a great measure deserted, and at present is in a ruin-

1 The nickname " Vide-Poche" (empty pocket), as we have before stated, was derived from the general poverty of its in- habitants, whose sole supply of ready cash with which to pay for the two most important items in their current expenditures, " coffee and fiddle-strings," was obtained by the sale of fire- wood in St. Louis, with which they were abundantly supplied for long years for miles around.

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1865

CARONDELET AND EAST SAINT LOUIS.

ous and dilapidated condition. There are a few brick houses scattered among the lots north of Elwood Street, being of the oldest brick structures of the place, but they are almost hidden from the main road by the trees and shrubbery which has been permitted to grow up in this comparatively deserted part of the old town. There were no houses in the old village north of E Street in the French days.

Carondelet had no church nor parish priest for over half a century. Shortly after the commencement of the settlement, as already stated, in the year 1767, a piece of ground on the ascent of the hill, immediately back of the centre of the village, was set aside for a cemetery and the future church. When the village was surveyed for the first time after its incorporation as a town, and the blocks were numbered on the town plot, this one becainc No. 57. It is bounded by Second and Third and Illinois and Kansas Streets. The eastern half of this block was used for interments for about sixty years, but the village was so small and the inhabitants so few for many years that they could not support a resident priest, consequently the most devout of them attended mass in St. Louis.

Early in the year 1823 a parish named St. Mary and St. Joseph was established by the Right Rev. Bishop Louis Wil- liam Dubourg, of the diocese of St. Louis, and a small temporary church of logs was put up at the northeast corner of the west half of the block which had been reserved for the church.

The first curate of the new parish was Father Jean Audissio, who was succeeded by Fathers L. De Neckere, Joseph A. Lutz, R. Loisel, S. P. Doutrelingue, and Condaminc, with occasional visits at intervals from Father Edmond Saulnier from the Cathedral parish at St. Louis, who officiated at times until he became the permanent curate, about 1833-34.

In March, 1823, the inhabitants of the village, about a hundred families, raised by subseription the sum of one hundred and fifty dollars, with which they purchased a half-block of ground on the west side of Third Street, across from the church, with a sınall house of posts on it for the residence of the priest, which was used for that purpose for a number of years.

In the year 1835, Father Saulnier replaced the temporary log church of 1823 by a new and much larger one of hewcd upright timbers, situated on the southwest corner of block No. 57, fronting on Third Street. This second church, after having served its |

purpose for some twenty-five to thirty years, was in turn replaced by the present one of brick, and very much larger, erected a little north of the other on the same block, where also stands the neat brick resi- dence of the curate of the parish. An entry in the church register by Father Saulnier, dated March 12, 1840, states that five hundred bodies had been in- terred in the original cemetery to the date of its abandonment in 1839.

The academy and convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph at Carondelet occupies block No. 58, next south of the church block, and separated from it by Kansas Street. It originated and was established under the auspices of Bishop Rosatti, in 1837, by Sisters Marie Pomarel (afterwards styled Madame Celestine, the first Lady Superior), Antoinette Font- bonne, Marie Fontbonne, and Marguerite Bonté, all from France, who were the first to conduct its affairs

bagiinan

VIEW OF CARONDELET IN 1840.

in wooden buildings, which in time made way for the large and commodious brick edifices that now cover the grounds.

When the United States established Jefferson Bar- racks, which is located on the southeast portion of the land claimed by the inhabitants of Carondelet as the commons of the French and Spanish period, the title to the land had not yet been definitely settled by the United States authorities, consequently the purchase by the United States from the people of Carondelet was only a conditional onc, to be determined thereafter. A deed from the inhabitants of Carondelet to the United States, July 8, 1826, recited that for the sum of five dollars paid by Col. J. B. Brant, assistant quartermaster United States army, a certain tract of land lying in the county of St. Louis, bounded as fol- lows : east by the Mississippi River, north by land of Julian Chouquette and Benjamin Patterson, west by the public road leading from Carondelet to Hercula-

1866

HISTORY OF SAINT LOUIS.

neum, south partly by the south line of the Caron- delet commons, and partly by the tract marked on the general plat as No. 3, quantity undetermined, had been conveyed to the United States. Should the United States cease to occupy it for military purposes at any time before the title to the same was definitely de- termined, it should revert to the parties of the first part, with the same rights they then possessed, the United States reserving the right of disposing of the improve- ments they might deem necessary to put on the land. This deed was signed by Samuel Solomon, George Schoultz, Antony Barada, Antony Motié, Hyacinthe Pigeon, St. Amant Michau, Louis Constant (his mark), Alexis Page (his mark), Joseph Menard (his mark), Aug'n Dube, John B. Shoultz, Dominique Fortneuf. M. P. Leduc, witness. Recorded Book No. 113.

The south line of the Barracks' tract is the south line of the Carondelet commons, and the north line of J. B. Martigny survey, No. 3779, in townships 43 and 44 north, ranges 6 and 7 east.

The most prominent of the early settlers of Caron- delet, many of whose posterity still reside in the county, were :

Delor de Treget, original pioneer, Antoine Barada, John B. Boucher, Joseph Chartrand, Sr., Julian Chouquet, Sr., Gabriel Constant, Louis Courtois, Sr., Louis Catalan, J. M. B. Chatil- lon, Joseph and Louis Desnoyers, Augustin Dube, Louis Du- breuil, François Fournier, John B. Gamache, Sr., Nicholas Gais, dit Gravar, Amable Guion, Joseph Guienard, Toussaint Hunaud, Louis Tesson Honoré, Sr., Charles Hotte, Etienne Lalande, Pierre La Puente, Joseph Le May, Laurent Lefebvre, Alexis Loise, Joseph Loisel, Pierre Martin Ladouceur, Sr., Antoine Marechal, Alexis Michel Marie, John B. and Louis Menard, Joseph Moitier, dit Rondin, John B. Petit, Hyacinthe Pigeon, Sr., John P. Poureelli, Sr., John B. Pujol, Antoine Rivière, Charles and Paul Robert, Charles Roche, Charles and François Roy, Lambert Sallé, dit Lajoie, Christopher Schultz, Sr., Joseph Hubert Tabeau, Claude Tinon, Charles Vallé, John B. Vien.

In 1870 Carondelet was incorporated with and became part of the city of St. Louis. A contempo- rary account, under date of April 8, 1870, thus de- scribes the act of taking formal possession :

" Yesterday morning Capt. Fuchs, eity register, aeeompanied by City Engineer Bishop and his clerk, visited Carondelet for the purpose of taking formal possession of the books, records, archives, money, and other property of that ex-corporation, now a part of the eity of St. Louis. Capt. Fuchs was armed with a written order from Mayor Cole, direeting the officers of Carondelet to make a full delivery of all the documents, ete., connected with their respective offices. The delegation were absent nearly all day. Capt. Fuehs returned to St. Louis proper late yesterday evening. Aeeording to his statement, he found things in a singularly confused condition, and the ex-officials did not appear prepared to furnish preeise information respeet- ing their departments. At the office of Auguste William Ga- mache, eity treasurer, Capt. Fuehs found that the eash assets of Carondelet consisted of one dollar, in two fifty-eent notes, of which he formnally took possession. IIe also found a quantity

of canceled city warrants, which he appropriated. Mr. Dough- erty, ex-register, declined to give the key of the safe to Capt. Fuehs, but said he would keep it until a settlement was made. During the day some cupboards, containing papers and records, two old maps, and a few boxes and books were sent up to the eourt-house in a wagon and deposited in the eity register's office to be examined. To-day Sergt. Prescott and four poliee offieers of the Carondelet sub-distriet attended Capt. Fuehs and Mr. Bishop in their investigations, and remain in charge of the office, and will permit nothing to be moved until the transfer is completed to-day. Capt. Fuchs states that various elaims to articles and documents were preferred by different parties, but that he took possession of everything he could find belonging to the eity, leaving the claims of individuals to be settled by the proper authorities. The safe was left in charge of the police. The records of the eity do not appear to have been very elab- orately kept, and only one book was found at the city treasurer's offiee.

" Under the order of Mr. Bishop, all work on streets was sus- pended until further orders, as defects were apparent in the matter of breadth and grade."

HERCULANEUM .- A history of early St. Louis would be incomplete without a brief notice of the now almost extinct town of Herculaneum,1 Joachim township, the former county-seat of Jefferson County, and the present site of Crystal City, where extensive plate-glass works are now established. Some thirty miles below St. Louis, on the right bank of the Mis- sissippi, an open space of about a mile in extent in the almost perpendicular limestone bluffs, which rise to the height of some two hundred feet above the stream, bordering the west bank of the river for miles above and below, affords an outlet through which the Joachim Creek, a considerable stream, having its. sources in the southern part of the county, and fol- lowing a north by east course, discharges itself into the Mississippi. In the early days of the settle- ments several of the old French inhabitants made selections and established themselves along the flat lands for some miles up this crcek, followed after a few years by a few Americans. After the transfer of the country to the United States and the extensive development of lead mineral throughout all this region back from the river, two enterprising Americans, Col. Samuel Hammond, Sr., of St. Louis, and Moses Aus- tin, of Ste. Genevieve, perceiving the advantages of this point for an extensive lead business from its nearer proximity to the mines than Ste. Genevieve, then the only point of shipment on the river, pur- chased from one Judathan Kendall, on Jan. 9, 1809, a tract of four hundred arpens of land at the mouth of the Joachim Creek, and immediately laid off their plat of the town of Herculaneum, which consequently was an American enterprise, and proceeded to the sale of a number of the lots.

1 Contributed by Frederie L. Billon.

1867

CARONDELET AND EAST SAINT LOUIS.

Early in the year 1809, immediately after the new town was laid off, John N. Macklot, of St. Louis, a son-in-law of Charles Gratiot, Sr., commenced the erection of a shot-tower on the rocky bluff south of the mouth of the creek, at the south end of the town, and on its completion, in the fall of the year, entered extensively into the manufacture of lead and shot, the first establishment of the kind west of the Alle- ghenies.

In that and the two following years, 1810 and 1811, a number of lots were sold, and the place took a start by the ereetion of a goodly number of buildings ; but the war with England of 1812-15 interfered mate- rially with its progress, as it did with everything else in this region, and checked its further advance for a time.

On the restoration of peace in 1815 it again began to grow, and for a time improved quite briskly, so that in 1817 the brothers Elias and William Bates, who had become residents of the place, felt justified in erecting a second shot-tower and lead-works, which they established at the northeast angle of the village. These two establishments, as also some others ereeted subsequently at points on the Mississippi, did an ex- tensive and flourishing business for some years, ex- porting from the country a large amount of shot and balls, and pig and bar lead.

Western Americans in those primitive days were so enthusiastically patriotie that they seldom permitted . the national anniversary to pass over without its due observance. They had a Fourth of July celebration in 1816 at Ellis' tavern, Col Samuel Hammond presi- dent, and Dr. John Finley vice-president, at which many from Harrisonville, on the Illinois side, came over and participated in the festivities of the day.

An evidence of the rising importance of the place in population and business, is the fact that a lodge of Freemasons was organized in 1818 under the Grand Lodge of Tennessee, with Wm. F. Roberts, W. M .; Seth Converse, S. W .; Wm. Bates, J. W .; Henry Cellinger, James S. Beaumont, and others. It was one of the three that participated in the organ- ization of the Grand Lodge of Missouri in 1821, there being at that day but two others in the State.

In the Spanish days this region formned the south- ern portion of the "distriet" of St. Louis. After our acquisition of the country and the terin " county" had been substituted for " district," it formed the township of Joachim, St. Louis Co., extending along the Mississippi from the mouth of the Meramee to the Platin Creek, six or eight miles below Hereu- laneum, about twenty miles of river-front, ineluding all of what is now Jefferson County. Governor

Trudeau made a number of grants of land to Amer- icans from 1795 to 1799 in this township.

The county of Jefferson, taken from the southern portion of St. Louis County, was organized by act of the Territorial Legislature Dec. 8, 1818, and Hereu- laneum established as its county-seat. The first term of its Circuit Court was held here on March 25, 1819, by Nathaniel B. Tucker, judge of the Northern Cir- euit ; Samuel Woodson, elerk; and Andrew Scott, sheriff.

The place reached its elimax about the time that Missouri became a State, when rival points for the shipment of lead, its main business, springing up along the river, mainly Selma and Rush Tower, far more favorable sites, some six or eight miles below, it began to deeline, and after the removal of the county- seat in 1836-37 to Monticello (subsequently called Hillsboro', its present name), a more central location in the interior of the county, it gradually eeased to exist, and was lost sight of until the recent establish- ment within a few years of the extensive plate-glass works, under its new cognomen of Crystal City, seems likely to again bring it into view. The population of Jefferson County in 1820 was eighteen hundred and thirty-five, and in 1830 two thousand five hundred and ninety-two.

Among the more noted residents of Herculaneum in early days, besides those already mentioned, were John W. Honey, Capt. R. P. Guyard, Mr. Ellis, C. C. Fletcher, and others. When in 1820, the first chapter of Royal Arch Masons in the Missis- sippi valley was established in St. Louis, so few of that degree were found in the country that, to pro- cure the necessary nine to the petition, the Masons were compelled to make drafts on two or three points in the surrounding country. St. Louis furnished four or five, St. Charles and Edwardsville, Ill., a couple each, and from Herculaneum they had the name of Clement C. Fletcher. This veteran Mason rarely failed for several years to attend the stated monthly meetings of the chapter, riding up on horseback from Hereu- laneum, thirty miles over a broken country, erossing the Meramee, remaining in St. Louis a night, and return- ing home on the following day, devoting two days to his trip. This gentleman was the father of Governor Thomas C. Fleteher.

EAST ST. LOUIS,1 situated on the Illinois shore opposite the city of St. Louis, had its origin in a set- tlement made by Capt. James Piggott, who in 1797

I For materials used in the preparation of this sketch the author is indebted to a " History of East St. Louis," by Robert A. Tyson, and to a Iccture delivered by Dr. Isaac N. Piggott before the Historical Society of East St. Louis.

1868

HISTORY OF SAINT LOUIS.

established a ferry at this point between the east and west banks of the river.1

Previous to this Capt. Piggott had established, in 1783, a fort not far from the bluffs, in the American Bottom, west of the present town of Columbia, in Monroe County, which was called Piggott's Fort, or the fort of the Grande Risseau, or Great Run. This was the largest fortification erected by the Americans in Illinois at that day, and was well defended with cannon and small-arms. Upon the petition of Capt. Piggott and forty-five inhabitants of this fort, an act of Congress was passed granting to every one on the public land in Illinois four hundred acres, and a militia donation of one hundred acres to each man enrolled in the militia service of that year. Governor St. Clair, knowing the character of Capt. Piggott's services in the army of the Revolution, appointed him the pre- siding judge of the court of St. Clair County. The then county-seat was at Cahokia.2

1 For a full description and history of this ferry the reader is referred to the sub-chapter on ferries in another portion of this work.

2 Dr. Isaac N. Piggott. The petition referred to above was addressed to Governor St. Clair, and was as follows :

"GREAT RUN, May 23, 1790.

"To HIS EXCELLENCY ARTHUR ST. CLAIR, EsQ., Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Territory of the United States northwest of the River Ohio :

" We, your petitioners, beg leave to represent to your Excel- lency the state and circumstances of a number of distressed but faithful subjects of the United States of America, wherein we wish to continue, and that under your immediate government ; but unless our principal grievance can be removed by your Ex- cellency's encouragement, we shall despair of holding a resi- dence in the State we love. The Indians, who have not failed one year in four past to kill our people and steal our horses, and at times have killed and drove off numbers of our horned cattle, render it impossible for us to live in the country any way but in forts and villages, which we find very sickly in the Mississippi bottom. Neither can we cultivate our land but with a guard of our own inhabitants equipped with arms; nor have we more tillable land for the support of seventeen families than what might easily be tilled by four of us; and as those lands whereon we live are the property of two individuals, it is uncertain how long we may enjoy the scanty privileges we have here; nor do we find by your Excellency's proclamation that those of us, which are the major part, who came to the country since the year 1783 are entitled to the land improved at the risk of our lives with the design to live on. These, with many other difficulties, which your Excellency may be better informed of by our reverend friend, James Smith, hath very muuch gloomed the aspect of a number of the free and loyal subjects of the United States. In consideration of which your petitioners humbly request that by your Excellency's command there may be a village, with in-lots and out-lots, sufficient for families to subsist on, laid out and establisbed in or near the Prairie de Morivay. We know the other American settlers near the Mississippi to be in equally deplorable circumstances with ourselves, and con- sequently would be equally benefited by the privileges we ask.

With regard to the topography of the country in the vicinity of the present East St. Louis, as it ap- peared in 1799, and the history of its settlement, Dr. Isaac N. Piggott says,-

"Cahokia Creek, or the River L'Abbé, as it was formerly called, did not run into the Mississippi where it now does, but formed a junction south of Piggott's addition to Illinoistown with the Slough, which then ran at the head of an island, described in the 'Western Annals' as being opposite South St. Louis, and with said Slough ran past the village of Cahokia, below which the only ferry from Illinois to St. Louis could then be kept. By reference to the seventy-second page of Mr. Butler's ' His- tory of Kentucky' it will be seen that Cahokia Creek was knee- deep in front of Col. Clark's camp at Cahokia, where he treated with the Indians, in September, 1778. But so great has been the change that neither Slough Creek nor island can now be properly recognized at that place. The late Auguste Chouteau, when speaking of the first settlement of St. Louis, says,-

"' At that time a skirt of tall timber lined the bank of the river, free from undergrowth, which extended back to a line about the range of Eighth Street. In the rear was an exten- sive prairie; the first cabins were erected near the river and market; no " Bloody Island" or " Duncan's Island" then ex- isted. Directly opposite the old Market Square the river was narrow and deep, and until about the commencement of the present century persons would be distinctly heard from the op- posite shore. Opposite Duncan's Island and South St. Louis was an island covered with heavy timber and separated from the Illinois shore by a slough. Many persons are now living (1850) who recollect the only ferry from Illinois to St. Louis was from Cahokia below the island, and. landed on the Mis- souri shore near the site of the United States arsenal.'

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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 189

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