ST. CHARLES COUNTY HISTORY

Category: People

While the village of St. Charles was first settled in 1769, it wasn’t until 1799, that one of the County’s most famous residents arrived. That September, Daniel Boone, made the journey with his wife, two daughters, and their husbands, and son Daniel Morgan Boone coming from Kentucky. His son, Nathan Boone soon followed, and they settled south of the village near the Missouri River. This was Upper Louisiana, under Spanish rule. The Spanish government wanted more settlers and would grant them land. They would also make Boone a commandant, or syndic of the Femme Osage District, where he would settle disputes that arose among the settlers there. He was famous for holding court at the home of his son Nathan, under a tree, called the Judgement tree.

The Spanish had encouraged Boone to suggest the territory to his relatives and friends. Others that had obtained Land Grants from the Spanish were Warren Cottle, John Pitman and Jacob Kunze who had settled further north of him along Dardenne Creek (Cottleville). The Zumwalt and the Audrain families who had settled over along the Peruque River (O’Fallon). Both flowed into the Mississippi River. Many of these families had come from Kentucky and Virginia, bringing their enslaved property with them. They were carving homes out of the frontier, a wilderness that was already home to the Osage, Pottawatomie, Sac and Fox Nations.

Many of the indiginous people had been residents of United States lands, from as far east as Virginia, that had had already been pushed to the current “far west” that is today’s Ohio River valley. These people called the “Illinois Territory” that would become the “Louisiana Territory” home when Daniel Boone and these early settlers arrived. Not wanting to relinquish their home, they would fight back. Attacks on these new arrivals, were building. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory by the United States in 1804, did not take these people into account. And while, the Spanish, the French, and then the United States “granted” these lands, no one took into account, those people who had already considered it their “home” for centuries.

Cover Photo: George Caleb Bingham’s painting Daniel Boone Passing Through the Cumberland Gap (1851–1852) depicts the famous frontiersman leading his family and settlers through the Cumberland Gap at the junction of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.