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.
  • August 10,1821

    August 10,1821

    Two hundred years ago, Missouri became a State on August 10, 1821. Its birth was not easy though. The land was purchased by the United States in 1804, and organized into  a Territory in 1812, with the first Legislative session held in Pierre Choteau Senior’s home. For the second session they were at the home of Madame Dubrevill on Second Street, also in St. Louis.

    Residents wanted to discuss Statehood, so they gathered at E. Maury’s Hotel on October 26, 1818. There they began to draft a Constitution, which was completed when the Convention met at the Mansion House on June 12, 1820. This was a large 3 story brick on the corner of Third and Vine Streets, that had been built in 1816. At this session, the Convention also drafted a resolution that the seat of government would remain at St. Louis until 1826, when it would be moved to a point on the Missouri River within 40 miles of the Osage River. The rivers were the highways of their day.

    The first session of the Missouri General Assembly was convened in St. Louis, and the election returns counted, with Alexander McNair becoming the first Governor. This was followed by high drama at the Missouri Hotel, at Main and Morgan Streets. U.S. Senators were elected by a caucus of a joint General Assembly, and the first seat went to David Barton by a unanimous decision. However, a bitter fight broke out between Judge John B. Lucas and Thomas Hart Benton. For days the 14 State Senators and the 43 members of the House debated and remained in a deadlock. It grew acrimonious and bitter. Then someone remembered that Representative Daniel Ralls had not come down from his room because he was ill. Needing the stalemate to end, a group of Benton supporters, carried his bed down to the Dining Room, where he feebly announced his vote for Benton. He died within a few days.

    Before it adjourned, and after  yet another long fight, they named Saint Charles the Mointeroirestemporary Seat of Justice.  McNair convened a special session on June 4, 1821 to discuss the objections raised by the U.S. Congress, on the second floor of a brick building on Main Street. That summer the heated debate over slavery floated down to listeners in front of the Peck Brothers Mercantile. A great compromise suggested by Henry Clay, ended the debate. Missouri was a slave state with the institution part of its history from its very beginning. With 11 free states, and 11 states in the Union, it would take the free state of Maine to balance Missouri’s entry as the 24th State.

    “Whereas the Congress of the United States, by a joint resolution of the 2d day of March last, entitled “Resolution providing for the admission of the State of Missouri into the Union on a certain condition,” did determine and declare “that Missouri should be admitted into this Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever upon the fundamental condition that the fourth clause of the twenty-sixth section of the third article of the constitution submitted on the part of said State to Congress shall never be construed to authorize the passage of any law, and that no law shall be passed in conformity thereto, by which any citizen of either of the States of this Union shall be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which such citizen is entitled under the Constitution of the United States: Provided, That the legislature of said State, by a solemn public act, shall declare the assent of the said State to the said fundamental condition, and shall transmit to the President of the United States on or before the first Monday in November next an authentic copy of said act, upon the receipt whereof the President, by proclamation, shall announce the fact, whereupon, and without any further proceeding on the part of Congress, the admission of the said State into this Union shall be considered as complete;” and

    Whereas by a solemn public act of the assembly of said State of Missouri, passed on the 26th of June, in the present year, entitled “A solemn public act declaring the assent of this State to the fundamental condition contained in a resolution passed by the Congress of the United States providing for the admission of the State of Missouri into the Union on a certain condition,” an authentic copy whereof has been communicated to me, it is solemnly and publicly enacted and declared that that State has assented, and does assent, that the fourth clause of the twenty-sixth section of the third article of the constitution of said State “shall never be construed to authorize the passage of any law, and that no law shall be passed in conformity thereto, by which any citizen of either of the United States shall be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which such citizens are entitled under the Constitution of the United States:”

    Now, therefore, I, James Monroe, President of the United States, in pursuance of the resolution of Congress aforesaid, have issued this my proclamation, announcing the fact that the said State of Missouri has assented to the fundamental condition required by the resolution of Congress aforesaid, whereupon the admission of the said State of Missouri into this Union is declared to be complete.“

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  • CALLAWAY’S DEFEAT

    CALLAWAY’S DEFEAT

    Here on the frontier in 1815, Daniel Boone’s grandson James Callaway (1783-1815), had taken command of Nathan Boone’s company of Rangers at Fort Clemson on Loutre Island (Located at today’s southwestern Warren County border across from Hermann, MO). They were about to mount another campaign, so Callaway had sent many of his men home to prepare, when the alarm came that Sauk and Fox had stolen several horses. Callaway gathered his men still at the Fort and took out in pursuit westward. They followed their trail up the dry fork of the Loutre, and discovered an abandoned Indian camp, with just their horses and a few Indian women there. They retrieved their horses, and turned towards home, with some believing that to return the same way would take them into a trap. It did.  As they forded a creek, they were fired upon and Capt. James Callaway was shot. He and five other lives were lost that day.

    In May of 1815, atrocities against the settlers continued, despite the events in the East. One of the worst happened when a band attacked the Ramsey family (near Marthasville, Warren County), murdering and scalping the entire family, except a two year old and an infant. The final battle here came on May 24, 1815 with the Battle of the Sinkhole, when Black Hawk and a band of Sauk attacked Fort Howard.(near Old Monroe, in Lincoln County MO) north of the Cuivre River. An ambush on a group of Rangers led to a prolonged siege in which seven of our Rangers were killed.

    Finally, word reached the frontier about the end of the war that had happened five months before.  President James Madison called for a Treaty to be made with the Indians, and selected Portage des Sioux for the location on September 15, 1815. He appointed Gov. Wm Clark, Illinois Gov.  Ninian Edwards, and Col. Auguste Choteau to handle the affair. With the U.S. showing their strength with Col. John Miller and his Third Infantry, and almost the entire force under Gen. Daniel Bissell stationed at Ft. Bellefontaine in place, the drums began to roll. The tribes began arriving July 1st and negotiations lasted for months, with Black Hawk never signing. But the War of 1812, our Indian War, was finally over.

  • THE WAR OF 1812

    THE WAR OF 1812

    War was official on June 18, 1812, and some would call it the “Second American Revolution,” here it would simply be our “The Indian War.” Callaway’s Rangers included settlers from Howell’s Prairie, Pond Fort, Femme Osage and the Boone Settlement. Companies were raised by James Musick at Black Walnut, Robert Spencer at Dardenne, John Weldon of Dardenne Prairie, Benjamin Howell out on Howell’s Prairie, and Christopher Clark in Troy.

    Governor Howard, advised those settlers with Benjamin Cooper out near Boone’s Lick, to move in closer to the main settlements where they could be afforded some “smallest measure of protection.”  Col. Cooper replied:

    “We have made our homes here and all we have is here, and it would ruin us to leave now. We be all good Americans, not a Tory or one of his pups among us, and we have 200 men and boys that will fight to the last and have 100 women and girls that will take their places with [them]. Makes a good force. So we can defend the settlement. With God’s help we do so.” And so they did.

    Closer to St. Charles the settlers gathered at Griffith’s farm, Johnson’s farm, Portage des Sioux, Royal Domaine, Wood’s Fort, Clark’s, the Peruque settlement, Price’s farmstead, Baldridge’s farmstead, Zumwalt’s Fort, Kountz’s Fort, and waited. Where ever they could, settlers created forts out of their homesteads or erected house forts. Where there were several families, cabins were erected and stockades connected them, with wells dug, protecting their livestock as well.

    Further west on the frontier was Journey’s near Warrenton, Kennedy’s near Wright City, Quick’s Fort and  Talbott’s Fort were near McKittrick (now Warren County) and Isaac Best’s and McDermott’s were near Big Spring, and Jacob Groom’s near Readsville (today’s Montgomery County) . North, in today’s Lincoln County, was Buffalo Fort near Louisiana, Stout’s Fort near Auburn, Clarksville had a stockade, Fort Independence,  and Fort Mason was near today’s Hannibal.

    In August, Winnebagos, Ioways, and Ottos joined nearly 100 Sauk Indians with  the British above Fort Mason, and stole horses.  A company of Rangers and Cavalry commanded by Capt. Alexander McNair were at Fort Mason at the time. With troops  commanded by Col. Nathan Boone,together they pursued the thieves that had made their way to an island on the Mississippi near Portage des Sioux,  and were about 200 yards out. When Boone and McNair caught up with them, they fled to the Island’s interior. The troop’s horses were too fatigued to swim, but McNair and his Rangers swam over and recaptured the stolen horses, after they had marched 60 miles that day.

    In September, 100 Sioux attacked a settler and his wife, stole their horses and cow, which they slaughtered. Captains Musick and Price pursued the attackers in their canoes. There were said to be at least 70 of them. They recaptured the stolen beef.  Then in October, the Van Burkleo family was attacked near Black Walnut.  A member of the Militia, Van Burkleo would later serve as an interpreter at the Treaty at Portage des Sioux when the War ended.

    Those years were filled with danger, and the settlers were constantly being attacked. Men were torn between serving in the Militia and protecting their families. Pleas were made to the Federal government, who the settlers did not believe were doing enough to protect them.  Its location made Saint Charles a passageway for all the Indian nations to the north, who had hunted this area for years prior to the arrival of the white man. Settlement was so scattered that communications were difficult. Just as we were the last to know of the beginning of the War, news of the Treaty ending it, at Ghent  on Dec. 24, 1814, was just as slow. Too slow, to prevent the horrible incidents that occurred next.