ST. CHARLES COUNTY HISTORY

By Dorris Keeven-Franke

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Award winning author, and International speaker. President of the Archer Alexander Memorial Foundation. Member of the Missouri Speakers Bureau and the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. President of the Boone’s Lick Road Association. Executive Director of the Missouri Germans Consortium. She has been writing for over 35 years and published several books on local history, German immigration, and other topics. Currently working on To Tell a True Story – Archer Alexander.
  • Establishing the birth of a City

    Establishing the birth of a City

    In 1769, Louis Blanchette settled along a small stream that would later bear his name. A fur trader from a very prominent and wealthy French-Canadian family had struck off to

    Blanchette-Coontz house
    House built on the site of Louis Blanchette’s original settlement in Block 20 on the Original Plat of the City of St. Charles established in 1769

    start a new settlement. The Spanish recognized Blanchette and made him their commandant after they took possesion in 1770.The Census of 1787 of St. Charles… contains the following information about Blanchette “Juan Bapta Blanchet, aged 51; Maria Su Mujer; 48, Baptiste Blanchette 24; Maria Blanchette 21” In addition to these his household contained, one carpenter, one huntsman and four laborers. Houck also quotes Auguste Chouteau, as noted in Hunt’s Minutes Book 1, page 127 saying “was established by Blanchette.” Houck also established where Blanchette lived “the lot upon which the first house being the square now numbered 19 bounded on the south by McDonald [McDonough], west by Main, east by Missouri [River] and north by Water streets, and from this we infer that Blanchette must have first erected his hut on this block when he made a settlement at what is now St. Charles.” In 1789, Louis Blanchette, sold his land in the southern part of the village to John Coontz, a German,… and he too erected a grist mill on Blanchette Creek, building a dam for it on what is now known as Block 79. Romain Dufreine, testifiying before Theodore Hunt, Land Commissioner, on May 7, 1825, swore that John Coontz had built his mill on this square thirty years before, i. e., in 1795, and had continued to occupy the land until he moved to the Dardenne ten or twelve years later. Blanchette died in 1793. Subsequently Charles Tayon was appointed Commandant of the village, and had to petition to the Spanish who literally owned the land, permission for such things as to cut wood in the commons. In 1800, the Treaty of San Idolfonso brought the small village back to a part of the French domain. Spain was unhappy with the treaty, as it did state that France was not to sell the land, which it promptly did in what we call the Louisiana Purchase on April 30, 1803. This was ratified nearly a year later in March of 1804, which is what held up Jefferson’s Corp of Discovery which left Saint Charles on May 21, 1804. At that time there were over a hundred families (about 450 inhabitants) spread primarily along today’s Main Street. The village had grown from 1787 when it had: eighty families to one hundred families. “The houses, about one hundred in number, in which the four hundred fifty inhabitants lived, were scattered along a single street about one mile long” By 1808, the Village is of such importance that the U.S. Government would send its U.S. Army to establish Fort Osage, as Sibley and Clark assembled their men here, they would leave on an established road, formerly called the Osage trace (a well traveled road) that left from in front of the former Blanchette’s house. On July 8, 1808 the U.S. Government, from their headquarters at St. Louis at that time had made laws that established roads, and the local village had begun to petition for a road to the west. The small village had grown to become a young City, westward expansion had begun, and on October 10, 1809, the City of St. Charles was Incorporated so that it was able to establish its own laws, survey and sell its land, and govern the village which had grown to nearly a thousand people already.

    The Incorporation papers say:

    City of St. Charles Record Book A Page 6

    Saint Charles Eighteen Hundred and nine

    At a Court of Common Pleas began and held at the village of Saint Charles for the District of St. Charles on Monday the thirteenth day of October in the Year of our Lord one Thousand and Eight Hundred and nine and of the Independence of the United States the thirty fourth.

    Presnt the Hon. Timothy Kibby

    James Flaugherty

    Francis Saucier and

    Robert Spencer

    In the record and proceedings of said Court we the following viz.

    In conveyence of the Petition of two thirds of the inhabitants of the village and commons of Saint Charles praying the said village may be incorporated. The Court finding then petition to be completely comporting with the laws of this Territory in such laws made and provided have therefore granted the said petition and have accordingly appointed Alexander McNair and Doctor Reynolds Commissioners and that a plat of said village and commons be filed in the Clerks off of this court.

    Wm Christy  for Clerk

    StChasInc

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  • The Hanging of Reverend White

    The Hanging of Reverend White

    Category: Person

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    In 1838, Samuel Audrain emancipated his slave, Absalom White, making him a Free Black, as listed on the 1850 census. He’d purchased the old slave who had been born in Virginia, from Pierre Chouteau years before, and brought him to Missouri, without his wife and children. He didn’t free all of his slaves, only Absalom…

    Know all men that I Samuel W. Audrain Jr. In consideration for the fidelity of my negro slave named Absalom White do hereby liberate emancipate and forever set free

    The emancipation of Absalom White in 1838

    In 1850, Absalom was living in the city of St. Charles, a free black man, where he had bought property which was in Lot 5 of Nathan Boone’s survey, on today’s Madison Street. He’s to be found in the 1850 census, alone, 72 years old, and on the property that he had bought and built a house. In 1848 Absalom purchased a little four-year-old girl, his daughter who was named Emily. She cost Absalom $150 and was purchased from David Wells, a friend and neighbor of Samuel Audrain in Saint Paul, further west in St. Charles County. In April of 1851, Absalom would write his will…

    I give and bequeath unto my daughter Emily now aged about five years and to her heirs and assignees, my house and lot in which I now reside…my daughter who belongs to me, after my death, I hereby liberate and set free…shall be placed with her Aunt Katy Ruland of St. Louis and educated by Susan Cummins ….

    Will of Absolom White, St. Charles County Circuit Court Records, also Ancestry St.Charles Wills Vol. 3-5

    In April of 1854 Absalom added a codicil to his will and assigned the care of his then 10-year-old daughter Emily to be by Marshall D. Fielding of St. Charles, and Darius Heald who lived near the recently founded village on the North Missouri Railroad named O’Fallon. Leaving instructions on how she is to be raised and taught to read the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. Absalom can read and write. He’s a preacher man. At that time, what would later become the African Methodist Episcopal church had not been organized yet in St. Charles County. He was recognized as a man of the Gospel simply by his people.

    Mr. White, a minister of the Gospel, was observed by a couple of secession spies talking with two negroes, on the road within five miles of St. Charles county, Missouri. They rushed up and seized him, bound him hand and foot; then taking him to an old stump of a tree, they produced a rope with a slip knot on it, and after tying one end of it to the tree, placed a barrel under Mr. White’s feet, and slipped the noose over his head. Mr. White here confessed that he had tried to get the negroes to run away. After he had said a prayer, the barrel was a kicked from under him, and he was left dangling between heaven and earth. …Mr. White was…always regarded by the people in the neighborhood as an abolitionist and had often been warned to leave…

    Absalom’s St. Charles funeral in May of 1854 was in the grand French Creole style, with a large procession with carriages. By 1860, Emily is a servant in Erastus Porter’s home in St. Charles, where there are three enslaved, a fifty year old mulatto male, a 17 year old female who has just had a baby born in January. Her property is in limbo as well, and despite the money owed to his estate and her, the property is often in jeopardy. Taxes get behind, even though money is owed to the estate. But there is ample funds to build a church!

    First African Methodist Episcopal Church built on 561 Madison Street in St. Charles, Missouri

    With the end of the Civil War comes new legislation, allowing former slaves to marry those that have lived as husband and wife, and Emily marries George Brown. She and George are married on April 6,1865, immediately after that law is enacted. In 1870, she and George have made their home of her father, raising their young family. They have five children, Cora born in 1862, David born in 1865, Absalom named for her father who was born 1866, Martha had come along in 1868, and little Julia is the youngest and born in 1870.

    House built by Absalom White in Saint Charles, Missouri. Photo by Dorris Keeven-Franke

    The Reverend Absalom White was a preacher man. When he passed there were ample funds for building the first A.M.E. Church, on Madison Street, next to his home in St. Charles. Soon after a new and larger church would be built nearby on Washington Street, named St. John A.M.E. Church, also known as “The friendliest Church in Town”.

    St. John A.M.E. Church at 547 Washington Street in Saint Charles, Missouri. Photo by Dorris Keeven-Franke
    https://www.facebook.com/StJohnAME63301/?ref=page_internal

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  • JUNETEENTH

    JUNETEENTH

    On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln would announce the forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation. This proclamation declared that, if the Confederate states did not cease fighting and return to the Union by January 1, 1863, all enslaved people within those states would be freed. It was a crucial step in the Civil War, signaling a shift towards the abolition of slavery as a central goal of the Union effort. Effective on January 1st, 1863, President Lincoln declared

    “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”

    Archer Alexander (Missouri Historical Society Collection)

    Missouri was a slave state that had never officially declared secession from the Union. Those enslaved in Missouri would hear of the news, and know that it did not apply to them because they were a “border State”. In 1863, Archer Alexander (1806-1880) an enslaved man who had been born in Virginia, and brought to Missouri in 1829, would heroically step forward and risk his life to inform the Union troops of a plot to destroy a nearby railroad bridge. Afterwards he would be forced to flee at the Howell’s Ferry Landing on the Underground Railroad, and nearly die because of it. In September of 1863, he would be given his freedom, for his important services to the Military. He had been helped by an abolitionist named Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot who lived in St. Louis Missouri.

    It would not be until January 11, 1865, that the State of Missouri would amend its Constitution and declare all persons held as slaves within its borders were free. The Civil War would end that spring. Then, on April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was murdered, by a Confederate assassin because of his actions to emancipate the enslaved. When the news of Lincoln’s death reached those who had been given their freedom because of this man’s actions, they were devastated, and a formerly enslaved woman named Charlotte Scott proclaimed that the “colored people had lost the best friend they ever had.” Sadly, it would not be until that following June 19th, that the U.S. Military would arrive in Texas and those that had been freed there were even told of what Lincoln had done! Today we celebrate that day as JUNETEENTH.

    It would be eleven years later, that on that same date of his assassination before a Memorial would be raised in our Nation’s Capitol to President Lincoln. The Freedom Memorial, often referred to today as the Emancipation Memorial, was the first Memorial to Lincoln to be erected by all of the formerly enslaved in Washington, D.C. . That Memorial still stands today, a National Landmark in a National Park. There with him is a Missouri man named Archer Alexander, who rises to greet his future of freedom. He has worked a life of toil, and has broken his own chains through his own actions, but because of Lincoln and his sincere belief that

    “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free”

    that all future generations will now and forever be free to celebrate Juneteenth!

    Archer Alexander is on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. For more information about Archer Alexander see https://archeralexander.blog/

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