History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men, Part 92

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 92

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During the trying days of 1877, when riotous mobs thrcat- ened the peace and good order of the leading cities of the Union, he was conspicuously energetic in organizing and arm- ing the citizens for the suppression of disorder. Maj. Turner died on the 16th of December, 1881, universally regretted by the citizens.

determined to accept the proposition of Messrs. Lucas and Turner, and resigned his commission in the army, to take effect on the 6th of September, 1853. On the 20th of that month he left New York with his family by steamer for the Pacific coast, and arrived safely in San Francisco. Maj. Turner was associated with him in the management of the branch bank until 1855, when he (Turner) returned to St. Louis, and Capt. Sherman was left alone to tide the affairs of the agency over the crisis of that year. Nearly every other bank in San Francisco closed its doors, but the house of Lucas, Turner & Co. survived the "run." Early in 1857, however, he informed the parent house in St. Louis that in his opinion the mainte- nance of the San Francisco establishment was no longer advisable. His suggestion was approved, and he accordingly closed up the affairs of the branch bank, and with his family removed to Lancaster, Ohio. Subsequently Mr. Lucas and Maj. Turner determined to establish a branch house in New York, which was done on the 21st of July, 1857. In the fall of that year the great financial panic ne- cessitatcd a suspension of the St. Louis firm, but Mr. Lucas assumed the liabilities and paid all the creditors, with ten per cent. interest.

In Normandie of old, in what is now the depart- ment of the Eure, at the head of navigation on the river Brille, which empties into the estuary of the Seine, stands the ancient town of Pont-Audemer,- not a large place, but venerable, with a history of its own, as you will read in Thierry and in Martin ; with seven thousand or eight thousand people, and manu- factures of leather and cloth. Its leather products . are quite famous in their way, and it is to the fact of manufactures being of old establishment in Pont-Au- demer that St. Louis owes the residence there of the Lucas family, who have done so much to improve and adorn the town and city ; for manufactures must have manufacturers, and these again their wives and daughters, and thereby hangs a tale. The procureur du roi (king's prosecuting attorney) of Pont-Audemer from 1760 onward was Robert Edward Lucas. An old Norman family, the Lucases, with a terribly long pedigree,-Lucas, Lucie, Fitz-Lucas, De Lucy, Filius Luca,-you will find their names in the roll of Battle Abbey, in the English Domesday Book, in Holinshed, in Joinville, in Camden, Leland, and Froissart, proud they were accordingly, sticklers for rank and social dis- tinction. Robert Edward Lucas married for his wife la Mademoiselle de L'Arche. He had a fine old family seat outside the town, and the office of pro- cureur was in some sort almost hereditary in his family. His wife bore him a son, Jean Baptiste Charles Lucas,

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Aug. 14, 1758, and this boy from the first was looked upon as destined to be his father's successor. Hc was educated with the position steadily in view, and with the profession also in which it was intended he should suceced his father,-an education at once liberal and exact, classical and technical, received in part at the university founded in Caen by King Henry VI. of England, and in part at the Honfleur and Paris law schools. At Honfleur, J. B. C. Lucas met his fate, in the person of Mademoiselle Anne Sebin, daughter of a manufacturer of cloth. Because her father was in trade, while the family of Lucas were gens du droit, Mademoiselle Sebin was not looked upon as his social equal. But she was handsome, well educated, and rich in mental endowments, and Lucas did not care much for the social arrangements which not only stood between him and the object of his affections, but also proposed to marry him to quite another person. Be- sides, in Paris he had become acquainted with Jacques le Roy de Chaumont, son of the landlord at Passy with whom Franklin and Adams sojourned during the times of the Revolution, and through him was im- bued with American ideas, becoming suclı a hot Re- publican, in fact, that he and the king's attorney, his father, could not agree at all. Le Roy was coming to this country to buy land and settle in Western New York. Lucas accompanied him, arriving in the United States in 1784, having first married Anne Sebin. As soon as he became sufficiently acquainted with the English language, Lucas sent for his wife to join him in the western wilds. Albert Gallatin, Lucas' lifelong friend, who had come out in 1780, had bought land in Virginia, but the Indians prevented him from oc- cupying it, and he was settled near Pittsburgh. Thither went Lucas also, and bought a farm, called " Mont- pelier," on Coal Hill, on the Monongahela River, six miles from Pittsburgh. Here some of his children were born,-Robert, the eldest, who was cadct at West Point by Gen. Wilkinson's appointment, and dicd in the service of his country in 1813, on the Canada frontier ; Charles, the lawyer, killed in a duel by Thomas Hart Benton ; Adrian the planter, who was drowned while crossing on the ice on Loutre Lake, Mo., in 1804; Annc, born Sept. 23, 1796, widow and survivor of Capt. Theodore Hunt, U.S.N., and Wilson P. Hunt, the great fur-trader, who after- wards kept store in St. Louis (Hunt & Hankinson) ; James H., born Nov. 12, 1800 ; and William, born in 1798, who died in 1837. Mrs. Anne Sebin Lucas, who was born in Honfleur, Aug. 10, 1764, died in St. Louis, Aug. 3, 1811.

J. B. C. Lucas, a man of great parts naturally and of superior culture, began at once to take part in pub-

lic affairs, following the example of Gallatin. Like Gallatin, he took the popular side in the excise trou- bles of that section, acquiring great influence, and being able to do much good by conservative and moderate counsels. His next neighbor was Maj. Ebenezer Denny, a Revolutionary officer, and one of Harmar's staff. The two were opposing candidates in 1795 for the Pennsylvania Legislature. Denny was a universal favorite, Lucas scarcely known, speak- ing English with difficulty, and charged by partisan maligners with being an avowed atheist, and with permitting his wife, during his absence in France, to have his land plowed on Sunday. Nevertheless Lucas was elected, though next year, in a purely local contest, Denny beat him badly for county commis- sioner, receiving nearly every vote. Lucas himself told this to Denny's son, years after. They were great friends, went to the polls together, and Denny contra- dicted on the stump the calumnies circulated about his political opponent. Lucas had a chance to repay this generosity in kind long years afterward. When he was judge of the Territorial Court in St. Louis, a case came before him in which Denny, who was not present, was plaintiff, and Alexander McNair, first Governor of the State, and a very popular and influ- ential man, was defendant. Denny's case rested on his own deposition and was likely to go against him, when Judge Lucas charged the jury, both in French and English, to this effect: " When I lived in Penn- sylvania," he said, " I was the next neighbor to the plaintiff; we differed in politics, we were opposing candidates for office, but there never was a more hon- est man. It is impossible that he could set up any claim that was not just and true." The jury found for Denny without leaving the box. Lucas was a man of remarkable prudence and judgment. Jefferson selected him, in the beginning of his administration, to go West and ascertain the temper of the French and Spanish residents of Louisiana. This was about 1801. He went incognito to St. Louis, and thence to Ste. Genevieve and New Orleans, taking the name of Pantreaux.

In 1803, Lucas was member of Congress from Western Pennsylvania, and on the purchase of Lou- isiana being completed, was at once appointed by Jef- ferson commissioner of land claims and judge of the Territorial Court. He sold his Coal Hill farm for five thousand dollars and went West with his family, arriving in St. Louis in September, 1805, and imme- diately investing his money in land in and adjacent to the town. Mrs. Hunt, in hier cheerful little memoir of her family, after mentioning that a Pitts- burgh lot, taken by her father for a bad debt, and

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afterwards traded for a horse, had sold for twenty-five thousand or thirty thousand dollars, adds, " On the advice of my mother, who had learned experience from the sale of the Pittsburgh lot, he invested his salary in the purchase of land. He bought mostly outlots, facing on what is now Fourth Street, each lot being one arpent wide by forty arpens deep. All this land was used as a common field, each man culti- vating what he pleased. There were no fences of any kind on it. By purchasing a lot at a time, he at length came to own all the land from Market Street to St. Charles, and from Fourth Street to Jefferson Avenue. He did not buy it as a speculation, but for what it would produce ; it turned out, however, to be an immense speculation, for the whole seven arpens front did not cost him over seven hundred dollars, and that property is now worth, I suppose, seventy millions ! A hundred dollars was what he usually paid for an arpent in width by forty deep, though sometimes he got it for less. The heirs to this vast estate need not thank my father for it, for he was too much of a politician to think of investing his money in land ; it was my mother's foresight that suggested the invest- ment which turned out so well."

This is rather a feminine way of looking at things, perhaps. It needed the sagacity of a man, not the in- stinctive security women feel in land-holding, to see the possibilities of the future in the untamed and unpro- gressive trading town of that day, with streets all mud-holes, Chouteau's hill a barren waste, and wolves prowling in the suburbs at Sixth and Chestnut Streets when the snow fell. James Lucas, with his traps, caught prairie-hens where the Laclede Hotel now stands, and rabbits on the site of the Four Courts.

Judge Lucas, so far from being an "avowed atheist," was, like all his family, a consistent mem- ber of the Catholic Church. So far from being a " confirmed poker-player," gambling away whole blocks of houses, as some alleged " old inhabitants" have gone out of the way to charge him with being, he was a man of refined, scholarly tastes and domestic habits, giving to his family all the time which he could spare from his business, and looking in person after the education of his only daughter, a lady of peculiar graces both of mind and person. He was a man of strong feelings, and grief for the untimely loss of his sons, five of the six of whom died sudden deaths in their youth and prime, bowed him under a weight of affliction such as would have crushed a less composed and resolute soul. These losses did, indeed, drive him into retirement and seclusion in his private life after the death of his accomplished wife and his distinguished son Charles, but they never

distracted him from close attention to his affairs. These were multifarious and complicated, as, besides the care of his own immense estate, with all its various interests, he had a large law business and a great amount of fiduciary concerns for others,-trusteeships, executorships, and administrations. It is related of him that in spite of all the innumerable time sales and leases made by him, through which he became the creditor of thousands of persons, he never foreclosed and sold up more than five mortgages, and the most of these by request of the debtors.

In 1814, having occasion to go to Washington, a journey then indeed, and scarcely to be made except on horseback and in the course of months, he took with him his son, James H., a frolicsome youth, full of fun and humor and rather coltish in his high spirits and free temper, naturally somewhat impatient of re- straint, having lost his mother so young in lifc. Re- turning West, James H. Lucas was sent to school at the college of St. Thomas, Nelson Co., Ky., an insti- tution in charge of the Dominican order of friars. Among his schoolmates at this academy were Jeffer- son Davis, with Louis A. Benoist, Bernard Pratte, Gustave Soulard, and Bion Gratiot, all of St. Louis. In 1816 lie and his brother William were students in Jefferson College, Canonsburg, Pa., an institution founded in 1802, and under charge of the Presby- terians. He was still here when, Sept. 27, 1817, his brother Charles died of the wound inflicted by Col. Benton's pistol. It is said, we know not how truly, that his father, disliking the lad's propensity for mis- chief, sent him from here to a school in New Hamp- shire. He may, perhaps, have been " rusticated." At any rate, he did travel, about the time assigned, in New England, and whether he sent his father a " declaration of independence" or not, he studied law in Hudson (or Poughkeepsie), N. Y., supporting him- self the while by teaching French in a young lady's seminary. In Hudson he studied in the office of Elisha Williams, a leading lawyer. Afterwards he went to the well-known law school of Judge Recves, in Litchfield, Conn., where he had for his fellow-stu- dents men like Governor Ashley, Ichabod Bartlett, of New Hampshire, and N. P. Talmage, of New York, afterwards United States senator.

In 1819 he and Ashley, tiring of the "land of steady habits," returned to the West, the two with a companion forthwith embarking on a keel-boat with the purpose of descending the Mississippi and seeking their fortunes in South America, then in all the tur- moil and excitement of revolution. Having got as far as Montgomery Point, on the White River, they seem to have changed their minds, took a pirogue up

James N. Lucas.

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the river, passed through the " cut-off" to the Ar- kansas, and landed at Arkansas Post, famous for its founder Tonti, the companion of La Salle, and for the connection of Laclede with the place. Here Lucas was fortunate enough to become acquainted with Mr. Notrebe, the chief merchant and planter in that sec- tion, an elegant French gentleman of culture and re- finement, with whom Lucas sealed a lifelong friend- ship. Doubtless this new acquaintance had a most beneficial influence upon young Lucas, for he seems at once to have settled down, resuming his law studies with energy, determination, and persistence, support- ing himself by teaching school, and giving all his leisure hours to study. Here, and at Little Rock later, he followed other means of livelihood also, set type on the Arkansas Gazette, worked a plantation, and ran a ferry opposite the place, charging twenty- five cents' toll for his fares, foot passengers. He secured the appointment of county clerk also, until he passed the bar, when he took his saddle-bags and began to ride the circuit. This industry was not without its reward, for Governor James Miller, of the Territory, made him in 1825 major in the militia, and afterwards judge of the probate court. In this posi- tion Mr. Lucas remembered to have often performed the marriage ceremony, and it was he who married Albert Pike, the poet and general.

On May 10, 1832, he was himself married to Marie Emilie Desruisseaux, a native of Arkansas Post, but French in descent. The father of Miss Desruisseaux was Indian agent at the post of Arkansas at the time,-a man of consequence and ability, well educated, and possessing great influence. He was a Canadian by birth, French in his origin, and had come to that remote station from Canada by way of the ancient town of Cahokia. On the mother's side, the late Mrs. James H. Lucas was more American in blood. Her mother was a Van Noye, daughter of a native of New Jersey (of Dutch descent) who had married a Miss Anderson, of Virginia, and had seen service during the war of the Revolution. Thirteen children were the fruits of James H. Lucas' mar- riage, of whom six sons and two daughters sur- vived him. Mrs. Marie E. Lucas died on the 24th of December, 1878, after a married life of forty- six and a half years, being then only in her sixty- fourth year. At the time of her death a St. Louis journal said that, "though occupying a position in society which the advantages of wealth and refine- ment entitled her to assume, she was unpretentious and unassuming. She was ever the dutiful wife, the indulgent mother, and faithful friend, devoted to every duty which a religious faith and matronly qual-

ities called upon her to exercise. Surviving her hus- band five years, she lived to see her numerous family settled in life, enjoying the large portions which fell to them from one of the largest estates in St. Louis. Besides her six sons she leaves two sons-in-law, Dr. J. B. Johnson, of St. Louis, and Judge Hager, of Cali- fornia."

In 1837 his brother William died, and James H. was the only living son of John B. C. Lucas, who was already old, getting feeble, and feeling lonesome. His daughter, Mrs. Hunt, had only at this time been married a year to her second husband, Wilson P. Hunt, and of course her own ménage demanded all her time. John B. C. Lucas wrote to his son James to come home to him, and, prompted by filial duty, the young man gave up his prospects in Arkansas and removed with his family to St. Louis. He ar- rived here in October, 1837, and settled on what Mr. Lucas called "the farm," or home-place, which his father gave him for his own. It consisted of fifty acres of land, and was valued then at thirty thousand dollars. His residence was near the fountain in Lucas (now called Missouri) Park, and he soon took the en- tire control and management of the extensive Lucas property, the judge, now nearly eighty years old, hav- ing become infirm and feeble. From 1837, therefore, James H. Lucas is thoroughly and effectively iden- tificd with the progress of St. Louis, and its growth in wealth and prosperity.

In 1842, on the 18th of August, John Baptiste Charles Lucas died, full of years and honors, and James H. Lucas and Annie L. Hunt, his sister, suc- ceeded to the entire estate.

The original tract owned by the estate was bounded north by St. Charles Street, on the east by Fourth, south by Market, and west by Pratte Avenue. That em- braced the Lucas property up to 1837. The last ac- quisition made by the old judge was Côte Brilliante, consisting of two hundred and forty acres, which was bought for one hundred and fifty dollars in gold, and comprised the undivided land owned by Mr. Lucas and Mrs. Hunt. Mr. Lucas had also another farm, the New Madrid location, his country-seat, called " Normandy," on the St. Charles Rock road, nine miles from the city. This portion, now belonging to the Lucas estate, comprises eight hundred acres. Also, at the mouth of the Missouri River, there are six hundred and forty-threc acres belonging to the es- tate. This is an old Spanish fort, where the battle of Bellefontaine was fought, in which fight Charles Lucas participated as colonel. There is also the Courtois tract, consisting of four hundred arpens, near Eureka Station, on the Maramec, still undivided ; also twenty

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acres ou the Clayton road, the old Barrett place. In the management of the city portion of his vast estate, in building and improvements, Mr. Lucas devoted the remaining years of his protracted life, and but rarely engaged in the turbulent excitement of politi- cal affairs. He was, to be sure, State senator fromn 1844 to 1845, making a good serviceable member, and in 1847 consented to run as the Whig candidate for mayor in a triangular fight in which W. M. Campbell, Native American, and Judge Bryan Mul- lanphy, Democrat, were his opponents. Mr. Lucas was simply the color-bcarer in a forlorn hope, and he ran for the sake of his party, not to be elected. Mul- lanphy triumphcd over both the other candidates.

In business enterprises of a public character Mr. Lucas took a conspicuous and leading part. He was always ready to subscribe his money libcrally and give his time freely to the service of any undertaking which he thought likely to promote the welfare and prosper- ity of St. Louis. He subscribed thirty-three thousand dollars at the start to the stock of the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company, of which he was twice elected president, promoting its success in many ways, and especially by shaping and indorsing its financial exer- tions. He helped to organize the St. Louis Gas Com- pany, of which he was also president ; was a director in the Boatmen's Savings Institution, and a large shareholder and director in nearly all the other promi- nent moneyed institutions of this city. In 1851, as hertofore stated, in order to promote his own exten- sive financial operations, he established a banking- house in St. Louis, branches of which were afterwards established in New York and San Francisco. He was now building very extensively, besides his ramified connection with many joint-stock enterprises, and the Lucas Market and the Lucas Place, both laid out by him, are perpetual monuments of the liberality of his great projects, and the taste which strengthened and embellished his judgment. His bank enjoyed, as it deserved, the confidence of the community, the vaults of the St. Louis house sometimes containing deposits to the value of two and a half millions.

In 1857 the banking firm of Lucas, Simonds & Co., of St. Louis, and the branch in San Francisco, under the firm of Lucas, Turner & Co., went under with the financial panic of that year. It was no re- proach to the stability of any concern to yield tempo- rarily to the pressure of such convulsions. Mr. Lucas gave his notes to all the creditors, some of whom valued the security so highly, with the rate of interest paid on them, that Mr. Lucas had not succeeded in calling them all in three years afterwards. In these financial troubles, Mr. Lucas, as we have seen, as-

sumed the entire liabilities, and paid off every credi- tor with ten per cent. interest, the loss to him amount- ing in the aggregate to about half a million of dollars. The debtors of the banking houses he never sued, but accepted whatever was offered.

In 1856, the year before this monetary cataclysm, Mr. Lucas sought a temporary relaxation from his labors in an extensive tour through Europe, his traveling companions being his son William and his daughter Elizabeth (now the wife of Judge Hager, of California). Hc visited the home of his ancestors in Normandy, and bought the old homestead near Pont-Audemer. Returning home he attended with assiduous industry to the management of his business. Under the transforming hand of time, and the rise in the value of real estate, his riches increased with the rapid progress of St. Louis.

Of this rapid growth and · unexampled progress Mr. Lucas was at once the observant witness and the sagacious promoter. He enriched himself by contrib- uting wisely and largely to enrich and beautify the city, and so freely did he employ his vast means that he was generally in debt for ready cash, and com- pelled to borrow money to help forward the innumer- able enterprises with which he was associated. Some- times his great estates made him "land poor," and he once told a friend, at a meeting at the Planters' Hotel, many years before his death, that while he was wortlı, as he supposed, two million dollars, he fre- quently had not money enough to go to market with. It was not with many people that he became thus confidential, for he was a quiet man, rather reserved, and fond of keeping his own counsel, but at times, in the company of a few friends, he unbent from his usual reserve, and was eminently social and fond of telling sketchy anecdotes of his early life and adven- tures.

Mr. Lucas was a man of marked capacity and posi- tive character, and of the most undoubted integrity. He was modest and unassuming. in his deportment, and retiring in his habits, with no disposition to put himself forward, but in whatever position he was placed he was emphatic and decided.

With all these elements of a strong character, he was fitted to assume the responsibilities devolved upon him by his father and to manage a great estate, which by his prudence, foresight, and industry was so largely increased in value and kept intact for the benefit of his family.

His fortune was very large. He owned two hun- dred and twenty-five dwellings and stores previous to the division of his property in 1872. His taxes the year before his death on his portion of the estate

FEE

RESIDENCE OF THE LATE JAMES H. LUGAS, NOW OCCUPIED BY HENRY V. LUCAS, NORMANDY PARK. ST. LOUIS GO., MO.

LITIEREy

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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 92

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