ST. CHARLES COUNTY HISTORY

News of the Portage des Sioux treaties sent a message to residents of eastern states; it was now safe to emigrate and homestead in the Missouri Territory. From 1816 to 1820 settlers “came like an avalanche” wrote missionary John Mason Peck. “It seemed as though Kentucky and Tennessee were breaking up and moving to the Far West.” The treaties also had political ramifications. Missouri filed for statehood in 1820 and William Clark failed in his election bid to become the new state’s first governor. Voters viewed him as being “too soft” on the Indians at Portage des Sioux. Jefferson’s plan of coercion through commerce had worked, though not exactly as he envisioned it. The treaty of Portage des Sioux reaffirmed the process of depriving the Osage of their land and it opened the door for a flood of settlers who rapidly filled the old Osage domain and clamored for more. At the beginning of 1808 the Osage dominated nearly 1/8^th of the Louisiana Territory but in just 17 years, they were left with a reservation only 50 miles wide and 150 miles long in southern Kansas. The Treaty of Portage des Sioux which meant peace to the United States only added to the change and turmoil being experienced by the Osage Nation.

In 1816, John Pitman (1753-1839) and his neighbors would file a Petition, asking the Government to assign a surveyor to lay out a road to the most western edge of U.S. settlement at that time, called the Booneslick. That road would become today’s Boone’s Lick Road. In 1816, roads were named by where they were headed! As this old Buffalo trace, turned into a trail, it was because the population was growing. Veterans of the Revolutionary War, like Pitman, had been awarded Land Grants for their service. Pitman had moved to Missouri by 1816, bringing many of his family and his relatives with him. His brother Thomas Pitman (1750-1825) had settled at Howell’s Prairie, near the Missouri River.

Pitman’s Land Warrant was issued for land in the Arkansas Territory in 1821, but he had already moved his family to Missouri by that time. He sold that land warrant to a relative, using it to enlarge his amount of property here in St. Charles County. But in 1816, he was one of a growing number of St. Charles County residents that realized that the Territory was growing, and that good roads were important. And just like James Morrison on St. Charles’ Main Street, who owned the Bryan and Rose Salt lick at the other end of the Boone’s Lick Road, Pitman wanted to make sure that his land would be on “the big road” as it was often referred to at that time.

In 1818, U.S. Land Sales Offices had opened an begun selling land using the Public Land Survey System of a Section Range and Township, which Thomas Jefferson had encountered in France. When the U.S. purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1804, it didn’t come with any records of who owned what land already. Besides sending out the explorers Lewis and Clark, surveyors were needed to lay out these grids. With the War of 1812, that process would be interrupted. After the treaties, work would begin anew by surveyors. However, the U.S Land Office was also involved at the same time, in identifying who already owned what land. Early settlers like Daniel Boone, Warren Cottle and Jacob Zumwalt had already purchased land prior to 1804. These early land grants from the Spanish were called into question and they had to prove to the new government that they truly owned the property. There was also a lot of land speculation and those that tried to claim land that they didn’t actually owned. And there were those who didn’t own land, but had simply “squatted” on a parcel calling it theirs.

This was a difficult time, as we were just a Territory, and with little representation in D.C., and thoughts of Statehood were beginning. The demographics were changing as well, as the fur traders were giving way to those coming from the states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee buying up huge swaths of cheap land and bringing their cheap labor force, the enslaved, with them.

RESOURCES

For More about Missouri’s Land Sales and where to obtain records see the Missouri Secretary of State Archives website:

https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/land/info.asp#:~:text=UNITED%20STATES%20LAND%20SALES%2C%201818,for%20each%20land%20sale%20volume.

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